Help me wrap my head around this...

This is a time zone and sunrise/set question. I already researched my answer but I thought my post would be more suitable here rather than the research forum? Perhaps I'm wrong.

Anyway, my story takes place in a small town in Michigan in 1923. At the time, with the exception of Detroit, Michigan was in Central time zone. DST wasn't established for some decades afterward. Michigan adopted EST for all of the state except the far western counties in the UP in 1931.

What I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around is the sun rising and setting so much earlier than it does today in our time. Today the sun rose at 6:15am and will set at 8:58 pm according to The Weather Channel. Right now we're in DST, so if I were to knock the time back two hours for 1923 time, the sunrise would be 4:15am and sunset 6:58pm. Unless there was some time adjustment somewhere between then and now that I don't know about, would this be correct? So, say for my Fourth of July scene, they shoot off fireworks after sundown. Today fireworks are usually shot off at 10pm, so back then it would be two hours earlier at 8pm.

The story is a vampire story, and the sunrise/set is rather important since three of the four vampires in my story cannot go into sunlight. I have some scenes that are/going to be dependent on the time and when the sun sinks. Hence, trying to wrap my brain around all of this.

cornflake said:

Doesn't the CST to EST go the other way? I could be TOTALLY wrong, as this is one of those things that often confound me and I have to spend a minute sitting and pondering and counting on my crumbs to figure out when a plane is going to land someplace, but....

I'm EST and CST is behind me, so if it's 12 here, it's 11 there, so if they went by EST and it rose at 6 there today (for expediency's sake, heh), it'd be 7 if you went by EST, no? So then I guess 6 again if you kill the DST? Maybe?

Maybe?

Click to expand...

CST is an hour behind EST. Right now it's 3pm (I'm in Michigan), in Chicagoland it's 2 because they're in CST and here we are in EST. Back in 1923, Michigan was on the same time as Chicago, except Detroit. And there was no DST. So right now, if it was 1923, with no DST, the time would be 1pm, because we go ahead one hour for DST so we knock that off of today's time, and then one more for CST. That's what I understand. But the sun rising and setting at such earlier times from what I'm used to, I suppose, is what's weirding me out, and I'm just trying to confirm what I think is true really is true.

Sword&Shield said:

You are correct. You subtract one hour to move back to CDT. Then subtract another hour to remove DST.

I punched in the info at sunrisesunset.com for Ann Arbor on May 1 of 1923. I selected -5 for Central time since that was the timezone it was in, and it spits out sunrise at 5:32AM with DST enabled. Disabling DST would put the time at 4:32AM.

I would say we are having a hard time adjusting to that concept is because A) it was moved to Eastern time at some point, I would draw the conclusion this timing had something to do with it and B) absense of DST time, something most of us have lived with our entire life.

TBH, going further than that would getting a little buried in the weeds. I think you are safe to go with that time unless you are writing some kind of historically accurate almanac regarding sunrise and sunset times.

Click to expand...

Thank you for confirming. In my response to Cornflake, I was saying that the time of the sun rising and setting is what's weirding me out. Imagining the sun rising at 4 something in the morning is just odd for me to imagine, but normal for the characters I'm writing (and for the people who actually lived in that time).

Nope, no almanac.