WEATHERGLASS

TIME ZONE PAGE

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Time Zones

Prior to the 1880s, time zones did not exist in the United States. Each town kept its own time. This wasn't much of a problem until the railroads came along. It was difficult to keep a train schedule straight when the time was different in every town. In order to solve this type of problem, the world has been divided into several time zones. Information on time zones may be found at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Information on time measurement may be found at The National Instutute of Standards and Technology. The law governing time zones in the United States is contained in the U.S. code Title 15, Chapger 6, Subchapter IX.

Ideally, there would be 24 time zones and each time zone would be one hour ahead of the time zone immediately to its west and one hour behind the time zone immediately to its east. In this system, each time zone would be 15 degrees of longitude wide since 24 X 15 = 360 degrees.

Unfortunately, the system described above doesn't always work well. The location of thee ideal time zone lines often cuts through states, counties and even cities. To avoid this problem, the time zone lines have been adjusted to more convenient locations. A world time zone map is available from the CIA World Factbook

You can search for the current time in a specific city by using the World Time Server search box.

Get Current Time with World Time Server
world time server Enter a country or city:

UTC, GMT and Zulu Time

When people are located in different time zones, it can be confusing to have discussions involving time. Because of this, one time zone has been chosen as a standard to be used in such situations. The time zone that has been chosen is the one based on the zero degree longitude meridian. This meridian passes through Greenwich, England, which is the location of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. This meridian, known as the prime meridian, was established as the reference point for the universal day in 1884. The time zone based on this meridian is known by several names. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), UTC (coordinated universal time) and Z or Zulu time. The Z designation comes from the military time system in which each time zone is assigned a letter. This time zone is assigned the letter Z.

National weather maps cover several time zones. This makes them good candidates for UTC time. The following table shows the current time and the relationship between UTC and various U.S. time zones. Red indicates that the time is for the previous day. An explanation of the time zone abbreviations is given below the table.

UTCAST
EDT		EST
CDT		CST
MDT		MST
PDT		PST
AKDT		AKST
HADT		HAST
00008:00 PM7:00 PM6:00 PM5:00 PM4:00 PM3:00 PM2:00 PM
01009:00 PM8:00 PM7:00 PM6:00 PM5:00 PM4:00 PM3:00 PM
020010:00 PM9:00 PM8:00 PM7:00 PM6:00 PM5:00 PM4:00 PM
030011:00 PM10:00 PM9:00 PM8:00 PM7:00 PM6:00 PM5:00 PM
0400Midnight11:00 PM10:00 PM9:00 PM8:00 PM7:00 PM6:00 PM
05001:00 AMMidnight11:00 PM10:00 PM9:00 PM8:00 PM7:00 PM
06002:00 AM1:00 AMMidnight11:00 PM10:00 PM9:00 PM8:00 PM
07003:00 AM2:00 AM1:00 AMMidnight11:00 PM10:00 PM9:00 PM
08004:00 AM3:00 AM2:00 AM1:00 AMMidnight11:00 PM10:00 PM
09005:00 AM4:00 AM3:00 AM2:00 AM1:00 AMMidnight11:00 PM
10006:00 AM5:00 AM4:00 AM3:00 AM2:00 AM1:00 AMMidnight
11007:00 AM6:00 AM5:00 AM4:00 AM3:00 AM2:00 AM1:00 AM
12008:00 AM7:00 AM6:00 AM5:00 AM4:00 AM3:00 AM2:00 AM
13009:00 AM8:00 AM7:00 AM6:00 AM5:00 AM4:00 AM3:00 AM
140010:00 AM9:00 AM8:00 AM7:00 AM6:00 AM5:00 AM4:00 AM
150011:00 AM10:00 AM9:00 AM8:00 AM7:00 AM6:00 AM5:00 AM
1600Noon11:00 AM10:00 AM9:00 AM8:00 AM7:00 AM6:00 AM
17001:00 PMNoon11:00 AM10:00 AM9:00 AM8:00 AM7:00 AM
18002:00 PM1:00 PMNoon11:00 AM10:00 AM9:00 AM8:00 AM
19003:00 PM2:00 PM1:00 PMNoon11:00 AM10:00 AM9:00 AM
20004:00 PM3:00 PM2:00 PM1:00 PMNoon11:00 AM10:00 AM
21005:00 PM4:00 PM3:00 PM2:00 PM1:00 PMNoon11:00 AM
22006:00 PM5:00 PM4:00 PM3:00 PM2:00 PM1:00 PMNoon
23007:00 PM6:00 PM5:00 PM4:00 PM3:00 PM2:00 PM1:00 PM


ASTAtlantic Standard Time
EDTEastern Daylight TimeCDTCentral Daylight TimeMDTMountain Daylight Time
ESTEastern Standard TimeCSTCentral Standard TimeMSTMountain Standard Time
PDTPacific Daylight TimeAKDTAlaska Daylight TimeHADTHawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time
PSTPacific Standard TimeAKSTAlaska Standard TimeHASTHawaii-Aleutian Standard Time

Weatherglass Trivia - Internet Time

Internet time is a concept started by the Swatch company of Biel, Switzerland in the late 1990s. The idea was to put the entire internet in one time zone. This system divides the day into 1000 beats. Each beat is 1 minute and 26.4 seconds long. The reference for this system is the meridian that passes through the Swatch headquarters building in Biel, which is located in the Central European Wintertime zone.

@000 is midnight in Biel and @500 is noon in Biel. The idea is that if you are going to schedule a conference call or an internet chat session, you can specify the start time in internet time and it won't matter where the participants live. It might be noon in Biel and 5:00 AM in Wichita, but it would be @500 internet time in both places. If you're interested, the current internet time is shown below.