2027 time change dates for New Mexico
At 2:00 AM the clocks jump straight to 3:00 AM in New Mexico. 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.
New Mexico keeps MST in winter and shifts one hour forward for the summer.
Countdown to the next change
Does DST Actually Save Energy?
This was the original justification, and it is the claim that has held up worst. A US Department of Energy report to Congress in 2008 measured the four weeks added to DST in 2007 and found a saving of about 0.5% of daily national electricity use — real, but small.
Other work has found no saving at all. A well-known study of Indiana, which adopted DST statewide in 2006, found residential electricity use actually rose by 1–4%: households used less lighting but more air conditioning on hot summer evenings. Any lighting savings are also partly offset by extra petrol use as people travel more in the lighter evenings.
Technology and Time Changes in 2027
Phones, computers and anything else that syncs with an internet time server handle the transition on their own. What still catches people out in New Mexico 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.
Background
- The Uniform Time Act of 1966 ended a chaotic period in which US cities set their own clock-change dates, and established a uniform national schedule.
- 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 spring transition is associated with a measurable short-term rise in heart attacks and fatal traffic crashes, an effect researchers attribute to the lost hour of sleep rather than the clock itself.
Agricultural Considerations
The story that DST was introduced for farmers has it exactly backwards. Farmers in New Mexico 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.
Tips for New Mexico
Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
Use the phrase 'Spring forward, fall back' to remember which direction to change your clocks.
Update your car clock, microwave, and other manual clocks that don't auto-update.
Use the extra evening daylight in summer for outdoor activities and vitamin D.
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in New Mexico in 2027?
Clocks go forward on Sunday, March 14, 2027 and back on Sunday, November 7, 2027.
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.