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Comment by oneepic | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, the website is called "timeanddate" and I'm still confused by the times on this site. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong... let me know. Right now it's 12:53 PST, and the countdown says it's about 5hr 38 mins to go until the eclipse begins, but then if you click the Seattle link on that page [1] it says it actually begins at 8:34 pm PST. On top of that, it shows the maximum at 9:11 pm PST.

In short, maybe the countdown is 3 hours off? And it's trying to communicate the time left until the maximum?

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/seattle

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From further down on your link:

- "6:32 pm: Penumbral Eclipse begins / Below horizon"

- "8:29 pm: Total Eclipse begins / Below horizon"

- "8:34 pm: Moonrise / Rising, but the combination of a very low moon and the total eclipse phase will make the moon so dim that it will be extremely difficult to view until moon gets higher in the sky or the total phase ends."

Right now it's 12:53 PST

I think you mean PDT. Which may or may not account for some of the miscalculation.

People should give up on specifying the S or D in casual timezone references. Simply writing "12:53 Pacific" usually gets the point across. Incorrect usage of S during D times of year is far more common than the rare case where the indicator matters.

Hard to say. Those in Arizona not in the Navajo nation wouldn't agree with you since they're still on MST.

I usually say "PT/MT/CT/ET" for those not in the list of stateside exceptions since it just removes ambiguity.

I just say "2 pm AZ" or "2pm utc-7", depending on who I'm talking to. MST is as likely to confuse someone ("oh, mountain time", then they're an hour off half the year) than it is to get it right.

Whenever I've been on the Nation, I've always heard it referred to locally as simply "Denver time."

See also : "Early, On time, and Navajo Time."

Interesting, I've never met or encountered someone from the Navajo Nation so that's good to know! I always wondered how it was resolved there.

That is something we should strive to correct people on. I've missed online events with friends because they would tell me "X pm PST", so I obviously just put the time in any time conversion app and end up being an hour late. It's easy for Americans, because you do your conversation by hand, for you people it means e.g. "one hour behind my time", but for everyone else who has to use an app to convert times, it's quite annoying and error prone.

Though it might soon be moot given USA is moving to permanent DST, so rather than people using PST wrong some of the time, it will be all of the time.

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