February is here and, before you know it, it will be March and springtime.

One sure sign of the coming season is the annual time change and the switch to daylight saving time. It’s a little more than a month away.

Daylight saving time will officially start Sunday, March 9 when we “spring forward” at 2 a.m., moving the clock ahead by one hour and putting more daylight into the evening hours and less in the morning. Modern technology makes changing clocks obsolete on most devices but for those that require a human touch, it’s customary to change clocks before going to bed Saturday night.

We will remain on DST until Nov. 2 when we “fall back” to standard time and set the clocks back an hour.

DST starts the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, a schedule first instituted in 2007 after the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The origins of DST in America date back to World War I as an effort to conserve energy needed for the war effort. Year-round DST, known as “War Time,” resurfaced during WWII, though local jurisdictions were free to choose if they wanted to follow the time change act.

The time change wasn’t standardized in the U.S. until 1966 when DST was set to start the last Sunday in April and end the last Sunday in October. In 1987, DST was expanded so it started the first Sunday in April and remained in effect until the last Sunday in October. Then, in 2007, it was changed again with a new start date of the second Sunday in March and end date on the first Sunday in November.