Time difference while living in Lille

11/2/2022 4:08:43 PM

Not addressed in the accepted answer is that start and end of observing daylight saving may differ by multiple days e.g., between the U.S.A. and central Europe. Though there is the consent to spring forward/fall back* in the night of a Saturday to Sunday, central Europe (including France) adjusted the clocks per yesterday (Oct 30), while this time the US will keep the daylight saving up to Nov 6. Thus the difference between the time normal in e.g., Paris and Boston of typically six hours is not fix (i.e., currently 5h only). Voilà, you see one reason why e.g., weather bureaus and the aviation industry like their time stamps to refer to a different standard (UTC).

What is often not this much a nuisance when calling home across the ocean, these «special days» may be an issue for internet services to schedule and coordinate e.g., a slot of time to run a measurement/record data or meetings if the server happens to be on the other side of the pond.

*) Spring forward, fall back actually is a trick to recall how to adjust the mechanical clocks in March (season of spring) and October/November (season of autumn/fall) in both regions of the Northern hemisphere. It’s a different story (more puzzling in some regard) in Australia with three time offsets for standard, and five offsets when states (except Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland) observe daylight saving; as a result, on Poeppel, Cameron, and Surveyor-Generals corner you could observe New Year’s Eve thrice.

10/30/2022 1:58:53 PM

You just discovered Daylight Savings Time (DST), also called Summer Time.

During the winter, Metropolitan France is on UTC+1.

During the summer, from the last Sunday in March at 2am to the last Sunday in October at 3am, it switches to UTC+2.

The goal was to have more of the “active” part of the day with daylight, in order to save money on lighting. The savings are disputable nowadays, but it’s still like this. There have been plans for years to stop the twice-yearly change (and actually stay on summer time all year long), but they haven’t come to fruition yet.

So last night, at 3am, it was suddenly 2am again.

Devices which know about the actual time zone and associated changes (computers, phones, tablets, smartwatches…) will take the changes into account automatically. Others will have to be reset. I had to change 4 devices this morning.

DST is common in countries with a big difference in daylight duration between winter and summer (higher latitudes). It is indeed quite uncommon in the tropics where there is very little difference.

Of course, that means that the time difference with your country of origin has changed as well, since apparently in your country there is no DST.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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