Why does Florida have two timezones?

Daylight Saving Time starts Sunday

Time to spring forward! Daylight Saving Time begins the second Sunday of March for most of the U.S.

West Florida made its stand. It wants nothing to do with Eastern Standard Time.

The refusal of Panhandle residents from Blountstown to Pensacola to sync their clocks with Tallahassee and Miami threatened to derail the Sunshine Protection Act of 2018.

“I tell you, honestly, if we were to (vote to) change I don’t know if I could go home,” said Sen. George Gainer, R-Panama City, during a committee hearing Monday. “All these years we’ve set our schedule to our time. We do not like Tallahassee telling us what time it is.”

Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, proposed to make Florida time Daylight Saving Time all the time. That would put an end to the twice-annual routine of moving the clock an hour ahead or back as the nation flips between Daylight Saving Time to standard time every November and March.

He also wanted to move the entire state into one time zone. Right now, the Apalachicola River divides Florida into the Eastern and Central time zones. The boundary follows the river downstream to just north of the city of Apalachicola where the river merges with the Intracoastal Waterway.

The dividing line then follows the ICW turning around and heading northwest and then due north to the Gulf County line. At which point, it follows the county line south to the Gulf.

“Why are you picking on the Panhandle? Why do we have to move? That’s what they asked me,” said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, about voters in the western counties. Montford represents folks in both time zones and grew up on Central Time in Blountstown.

To get his bill past Gainer and Montford, the chair of the Commerce Committee, Steube revised the proposal. He told the committee he understood Panhandle residents had no objections to a permanent DST.

“The time zones will remain the same,” explained Steube when he amended the bill to keep the state divided between CST and EST. “However, if Congress allows when we spring forward in March we will stay there.”

Florida would have to petition Congress for permission to make DST permanent Florida time. And Steube expects if he gets the bill through it will trigger a groundswell of interest among other states and a nationwide examination of the annual flip ahead and fall back in time – a tradition that’s been referred to as humanity’s dumbest ritual.

Companies complain the jumping ahead or falling back on the clock creates scheduling, staffing, and other logistical problems.

“When you look at the history of why we started Daylight Saving Time a hundred years ago, World War I, to conserve fuel,” said Steube. “At this time, there’s really no legitimate reason to keep it.”

The measure has one more committee stop before it heads to the Senate floor.

Reporter James Call can be reached at .

There are 37 time zones in the world and six of those (or seven during Daylight Savings) cover the 50 states that make up the United States. Within those time zones, 13 states are divided into two zones.

Quite often, just a small portion of these states are in a different time zone than the rest of the state. But South Dakota, Kentucky, and Tennessee are nearly cut in half by the time zone change. This is not unusual, as time zones throughout the world zig and zag along lines of longitude with no distinct pattern. But why are time zones like this, and how exactly is the United States split?

Time zones are crooked because it is up to each government to regulate them in their country. There are standard time zones for the world, but where exactly those lie and whether to split the country up according to these is a decision made by individual nations.

The United States, for example, had its time zones standardized by Congress. When first drawing the lines, officials tried to avoid splitting metropolitan areas and took other factors into account that might have complicated life for each area's residents. In many places, U.S. time zone lines do actually follow state borders, but that is certainly not always the case, as you will see in the following 13 states.

The majority of western states are in the Pacific time zone. Idaho and Oregon are the two states with small portions following Mountain time.

Idaho: The entire lower half of Idaho is in the Mountain time zone and only the northern tip of the state uses Pacific time.
Oregon: Almost all of Oregon is on Pacific time, and only a small area of the east-central border of the state observes Mountain time.

From Arizona and New Mexico to Montana, the southwestern and Rocky Mountain states mostly use Mountain time. Arizona (aside from Navajo Nation) does not observe DST and therefore "shares" time, as a MST state, with Pacific states during Daylight Savings. However, this time zone peaks over the borders of a few states, leaving five states with a Central-Mountain time split.

Kansas: A small chunk of the far western border of Kansas uses Mountain time, but the majority of the state is on Central time.
Nebraska: The western portion of Nebraska is on Mountain time but most of the state's population uses Central time. The cities of Valentine, North Platte, and the capital of Lincoln, for example, are all in the Central time zone.
North Dakota: The southwestern corner of North Dakota is on Mountain time but the rest of the state uses Central.
South Dakota: This state is almost cut in half by the two time zones. All of eastern South Dakota is on Central time, while the majority of the western half—which includes Rapid City and the Black Hills mountain range—follow Mountain time.
Texas: The extreme western corner of Texas that borders New Mexico and Mexico is on Mountain time. This includes the city of El Paso. The rest of the state, including the entire panhandle, is on Central.

On the other side of the central United States is another time zone line that splits five states between the Central and Eastern time zones.

Florida: The majority of Florida's panhandle, including the city of Pensacola, is on Central time. The rest of the state is in the Eastern time zone.
Indiana: This state has two small pockets of Central time on the western side. In the north, Gary is on Central time because of its proximity to Chicago, while South Bend is on Eastern time. In the southwest, a slightly larger section of Indiana is in the Central zone.
Kentucky: Kentucky is cut almost in half by time zones. The western part of the state, including Bowling Green, is on Central while the eastern half, including Louisville and Lexington, is on Eastern time.
Michigan: The division between Central and Eastern time zones runs through the middle of Lake Michigan and curves west through Michigan's Upper Peninsula. While the entire Lower Peninsula follows Eastern time, the UP has a sliver of Central time along its border with Wisconsin.
Tennessee: Just like Kentucky, Tennessee is divided into two distinct time zones. The majority of the western half of the state, including Nashville, is on Central. The eastern half of the state, including Chattanooga, is on Eastern time.

Alaska is the largest state in the country, so it only stands to reason that it is in two time zones. But did you know that Alaska actually has a time zone all its own? This, called the Alaska time zone, covers almost every piece of the state.

The exceptions in Alaska are the Aleutian Islands and St. Lawrence Island, which are in the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone.