Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Time in Alaska

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Time zones

Alaska is covered by two time zones, as described below:

Contents

  • Islands west of -169.5° (169°30'W) are in the Hawaii–Aleutian Time Zone (UTC−10:00, DST UTC−09:00). Daylight saving time (DST) is observed.
  • The town of Hyder, because it essentially is a single town split by the US-Canada border with roads only to Canada, unofficially observes Pacific Time including DST (UTC−08:00, DST UTC−07:00) like its neighbor Stewart, British Columbia, with the exception of the U.S. Post Office (because it is a federal facility). The Indian reservation of Metlakatla also uses UTC−08:00. This is legal time, since Indian reservations can decide this.
  • The rest of the state is in the Alaska Time Zone and observes DST (UTC−09:00, DST UTC−08:00).

    • History

    In 1901 Alaska started to use the time zones. Before time zones were introduced, every place used local observation of the sun to set their clocks, which means they used local mean time, every city different based on their longitude. On 18 October 1867 Alaska changed from belonging to Russia (Russian America), to belonging to the United States (the Alaska Purchase). Before this event, Alaska used the same date as Asia. The capital was Sitka (135.3345°W) which had local time +14:59 before 1867 and -9:01 afterwards. This means that Alaska backed one day in the calendar, but also because of the switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian calendar, Alaska also skipped 12 days, so that October 6 was followed by October 18. Because of the calendar which diverged by 12 days from the calendar used in Europe (causing 11 days difference between Alaska and California), it is possible to say that Alaska before 1867 used GMT−274, not GMT+14.

    From 1901 until 1983 there were the following timezones:

  • Nome, Adak and the west coast and the Aleutians used –11.
  • Anchorage, Fairbanks and most of surrounding areas used –10.
  • Yakutat used –9.
  • Juneau and all of the southeast used –8.

    • In 1942–1945 all of the US including Alaska added one hour compared to other years. In 1967 Daylight saving time was introduced in the US including Alaska.

    In 1983 Alaska skipped two zones and kept only two time zones, Alaska and Aleutian time, where Aleutian has UTC-10 and all other parts of Alaska has UTC-9. One hour Daylight saving time is added in summer.

    tz database

    The tz database version 2016j contains seven time zones for Alaska for historical reasons. Only three (America/Adak, America/Anchorage, and America/Metlakatla) are currently necessary.

    References

    Time in Alaska Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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