Paul Eggert > INTERNET:eggert@twinsun.com wrote:
despite the phrases used in the news articles, the Sri Lanka time switch isn't daylight time in the usual sense -- it's a permanent change
Are you sure of this? Is it 'for the duration of the emergency' or is it meant to permanent and for all time, or is it year-round until a definite date in the future? (As an aside, YRDST in the United States, when implemented in 1942, was to last until six months after the end of the war, but was modified by another bill in the summer of 1945, after the war was won, to end on the last Sunday in September, the ending date for most jurisdictions observing seasonal DST in the twenty years before the war. A lot of war-related legislation had a 'duration plus six months' clause in it.) I had imagined that the change would be year-round and not seasonal, because of SL being so near the equator; I ran some sunrise/sunset data for Colombo and noted there was only a 36 minute difference between the latest (February 2, 6:29 GMT+5:30) and earliest (May 26, 5:53 GMT+5:30) sunrises of the year.