2028 time change dates for Indiana
At 2:00 AM the clocks jump straight to 3:00 AM in Indiana. That hour never happens, and everyone loses an hour of sleep.
At 2:00 AM the clocks return to 1:00 AM, so that hour is lived through twice and the night is an hour longer.
Indiana keeps EST in winter and shifts one hour forward for the summer.
Countdown to the next change
Technology and Time Changes in 2028
Phones, computers and anything else that syncs with an internet time server handle the transition on their own. What still catches people out in Indiana is the long tail of devices that don't: car dashboards, ovens and microwaves, wall clocks, older thermostats, and cheap alarm clocks with a DST setting hard-coded to a schedule that has since changed.
For anyone running servers, the transitions are a recurring source of bugs — duplicated or missing local timestamps around the changeover, cron jobs that fire twice or not at all, and stale operating system timezone databases. Storing timestamps in UTC and keeping the tzdata package current avoids almost all of it.
Agricultural Considerations
The story that DST was introduced for farmers has it exactly backwards. Farmers in Indiana and elsewhere were among its most persistent opponents, and the American farm lobby successfully campaigned to have national DST repealed after the First World War.
The reason is straightforward: farm work follows the sun, not the clock. Moving the clock forward just means doing the same work an hour earlier by the clock, while deliveries, markets and hired labour all shift with it. Dairy farmers make the point most often, since cows keep to their own schedule and take several days to adjust to a changed milking time.
Background
- The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended US DST by four weeks starting in 2007, moving the start to the second Sunday in March and the end to the first Sunday in November.
- Arizona and Hawaii are the only US states that skip DST statewide, along with the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands.
- The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end mandatory clock changes, but member states never agreed on which time to keep, so the change has stalled indefinitely.
Tips for Indiana
Remember that not all countries change on the same date - check international meeting times carefully.
Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
Gradually adjust your sleep schedule a few days before the time change to minimize disruption.
Use the phrase 'Spring forward, fall back' to remember which direction to change your clocks.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Indiana in 2028?
Clocks go forward on Sunday, March 12, 2028 and back on Sunday, November 5, 2028.
Which way do the clocks go?
"Spring forward, fall back" is the usual mnemonic: forward one hour in spring, back one hour in autumn.
Do I have to change anything myself?
Phones, computers and anything that syncs over the internet update on their own. Car clocks, ovens, microwaves and older wall clocks generally do not.
Is Daylight Saving Time being scrapped?
It has been proposed in many places and adopted in few. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end mandatory clock changes and the change has stalled; in the United States the Sunshine Protection Act has repeatedly passed the Senate without becoming law. Most of the world that changes its clocks is still changing them.