Help understanding time zones.
 

Help understanding time zones.

Hi everyone,

I need to make a call to LA.

I need to rind at 11:30AM LA time.

I am struggling to understand the time difference.

Are they 8 hours behind us or 7 with day light savings time?

This site doesn't help:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=137

Does anyone know what time I will need to call from the UK to get through at 11:30AM LA time.

Many Thanks

:)

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

7:30pm

they are -8 hours GMT

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

Thanks for your quick reply - I am ready to make my call :)

this thread can now be deleted.

Thanks

mark

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

Come on Mods ..you heard the man ..Snap to it ...

try this ... http://www.time.gov/

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

Well, to be completely pedantic about it, the US west coast is only GMT -8 during standard time; right now, it's GMT -7.

GMT never changes, it is never adjusted for daylight savings time. So with daylight savings time in effect, the UK itself is currently at GMT +1, not GMT.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

yes- Britain is on BST now (GMT +1)

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

And Britain switches onto daylight saving on a different date to the U.S.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

And some parts of the US don't switch to daylight savings at all.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

You're giving me nightmares.... time zones are changing their characteristics constantly and there's an effing database to track all the changes.

If you want to be totally accurate at any time, you have to use the most recent Olson time zone tables, as here:

http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/xtra/tzdatepick.html

On the other hand you could just go here:

http://cbs2.com/

and wait til it tells you it's 11.30 am.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

Yeah I fgured that out after I had posted that to him, I went and researched the time zones and found GMT doesn't even exist anymore. It is UTC and UT1. I never realised they had changed it to Universal time. This takes in to account the rotation of the Earth.

GMT is only used as a casual reference which pertains to UTC and UT1.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

For future reference, you can type in google "what time in London / Chicago / New York, etc" and get the answer

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, ruled up until fairly recently.... as did the British Empire who put the zero meridian there in the first place. :p

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

You're right. I had forgotten that it was no longer acceptable to use terminology that would permit a London suburb to be defined as the center of the (time) universe.

At least we don't have the Aussie problem, where every state not only determines whether to observe daylight savings, but what dates to begin and end it. If that wasn't enough, they have a half-hour time zone. End result -- there are times of year when it is earlier on parts of the east coast than it is in the center. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

We do have part of that problem. It's a bloody mess and a nuisance and should be done away with. It does NOT save energy. Farmers hate it. There's absolutely no financial or logistical support for it, yet we cling to an anachronism. If I want one to cling to, it'd be one employer for life and a gold watch after 30 years, not bloody daylight savings time.

Re: Help understanding time zones.
 

I happen to like daylight savings time, although it doesn't save much of anything. I'd hate to get rid of it.