Russia +4 breakout oblasts
Oscar van Vlijmen made (as far as I understand) a thourough investigation of the Russian timezones in 2001-08-25 which documented all the oblasts that the russian timezones covers, listing the oblast's that correspond to each timezone. There are many english-speaking sites that to this day disagree with specific cities (stating that Kirov is on GMT+4 and similar), but after checking some russian sites I have come to the conclusion that the highly appreciated work of Oscar is still corresponding to current time in those places. However, all of the russian timezones in the tz database are declared as having been unaltered since 1991-1993 (this differs a bit from one russian timezone to the other), and especially the Europe/Samara timezone is unchanged since 1991 Oct 20 3:00. The following maps show the oblast' Kirovskaya, Saratovskaya, Volgogradskaya and Astrakhanskaya to be on GMT+4 as well: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/reference_maps/pdf/time_zones. pdf http://www.statoids.com/tru.html http://www.manifold.net/download/freemaps.html http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/time_zone_world_98.jpg This is also true for a recent (1995+) ESRI map of timezones I have seen. The above links are all taken directly or indirectly from http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm Oscar is correct that since 2001 these were no longer on GMT+4 but had returned to GMT+3, but this return we have not documented with one or several timezones. I am not aware when these changes happened, but any guess would be better than the current state, where these four oblast' are on Moscow time since 1880, which is hardly likely to be true, if so many map makers have insisted on that they were on GMT+4 or even GMT+5. Regards, - Jesper Jesper Nørgaard Welen Email: jnorgard@Prodigy.Net.mx Project Leader (Líder de Proyecto) Software CIMMYT - Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo Dirección: CIMMYT Int. c/o Jesper Nørgaard Km. 45, Carretera México-Veracruz El Batán Texcoco, Edo. de México CP 56130 MEXICO Tel.: +52 (55) 58-04-20-04 ext. 1374 Fax: +52 (55) 58-04-75-58 Tel. Casa: 53-10-05-95 ó 53-10-97-78 Download the free program World Time Explorer, I made: http://www.worldtimeexplorer.com/index.html
Jesper Norgaard Welen <jnorgard@prodigy.net.mx> writes:
The following maps show the oblast' Kirovskaya, Saratovskaya, Volgogradskaya and Astrakhanskaya to be on GMT+4 ... Oscar is correct that since 2001 these were no longer on GMT+4 but had returned to GMT+3, but this return we have not documented with one or several timezones.
Thanks for the heads-up. Shanks & Pottenger (2003) say Kirov is still at +0400, which sounds incorrect to me; and that Saratov, Volgograd, and Astrakhan switched to +0300 on 1992-03-29 02:00. Of all these, Volgograd has the largest population, so I suppose it should get a tz entry. I'll need to review Shanks & Pottenger, and Shanks's earlier editions, to see how this error crept into the tz database. Also, I'm puzzled by the disagreement about Kirov. Here's a draft entry for Volgograd, given what I know now. # # Astrakhanskaya oblast', Kirovskaya oblast', Saratovskaya oblast', # Volgogradskaya oblast'. Shanks & Pottenger say Kirov is still at +0400 # but Wikipedia (2006-05-09) says +0300. Perhaps it switched after the # others? But we have no data. Zone Europe/Volgograd 2:57:40 - LMT 1920 Jan 3 3:00 - TSAT 1925 Apr 6 # Tsaritsyn Time 3:00 - STAT 1930 Jun 21 # Stalingrad Time 4:00 - STAT 1961 Nov 11 4:00 Russia VOL%sT 1989 Mar 26 2:00s # Volgograd T 3:00 Russia VOL%sT 1991 Mar 31 2:00s 4:00 - VOLT 1992 Mar 29 2:00s 3:00 Russia VOL%sT
Thanks for considering the case! For what it's worth, you might check out this reference, which is the closest to an authoritative reference (apart from wikipedia) that I could find. Wikipedia has a page about the Kirov Oblast' : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov_Oblast this one has a direct link to the official Kirov Oblast web page in russian: http://www.gov-vyatka.ru/ this web site doesn't seem to have a direct mentioning of the GMT offset, althought I admit my 3 years college russian is not very able any more, but there is a direct link to the Kirov page of www.gismeteo.ru which is http://www.gismeteo.ru/weather/towns/27196.htm again here I could not find the GMT offset directly, but the page has an astronomic frame at the left side with a little moon, where the sunrise and sunset times are 4:21 and 20:53. This corresponds to GMT+4, which means GMT+3 with DST right now. In World Time Explorer I have Kirov on GMT+4 (+ 1 hour DST) at the moment, and showing sunrise and sunset as 5:18 and 21:57. I assume here that the Kirov Oblast would not put a direct link to a page showing the wrong time for it, not even within sunrise or sunset. But for Russia, we lack authoritative information both regarding current GMT offsets and timezone history. It must be there somewhere (in Russia), but it's really hard to excavate with only internet tools and a limited russian vocabulary. Regards - Jesper -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu] Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2006 04:40 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Russia +4 breakout oblasts Jesper Norgaard Welen <jnorgard@prodigy.net.mx> writes:
The following maps show the oblast' Kirovskaya, Saratovskaya, Volgogradskaya and Astrakhanskaya to be on GMT+4 ... Oscar is correct that since 2001 these were no longer on GMT+4 but had returned to GMT+3, but this return we have not documented with one or several timezones.
Thanks for the heads-up. Shanks & Pottenger (2003) say Kirov is still at +0400, which sounds incorrect to me; and that Saratov, Volgograd, and Astrakhan switched to +0300 on 1992-03-29 02:00. Of all these, Volgograd has the largest population, so I suppose it should get a tz entry. I'll need to review Shanks & Pottenger, and Shanks's earlier editions, to see how this error crept into the tz database. Also, I'm puzzled by the disagreement about Kirov. Here's a draft entry for Volgograd, given what I know now. # # Astrakhanskaya oblast', Kirovskaya oblast', Saratovskaya oblast', # Volgogradskaya oblast'. Shanks & Pottenger say Kirov is still at +0400 # but Wikipedia (2006-05-09) says +0300. Perhaps it switched after the # others? But we have no data. Zone Europe/Volgograd 2:57:40 - LMT 1920 Jan 3 3:00 - TSAT 1925 Apr 6 # Tsaritsyn Time 3:00 - STAT 1930 Jun 21 # Stalingrad Time 4:00 - STAT 1961 Nov 11 4:00 Russia VOL%sT 1989 Mar 26 2:00s # Volgograd T 3:00 Russia VOL%sT 1991 Mar 31 2:00s 4:00 - VOLT 1992 Mar 29 2:00s 3:00 Russia VOL%sT
From: Jesper Norgaard Welen .... has a direct link to the official Kirov Oblast web page in russian: http://www.gov-vyatka.ru/ this web site doesn't seem to have a direct mentioning of the GMT offset, althought I admit my 3 years college russian is not very able any more, but I can't find any reference to local time either by itself or with respect to Moscow. Haven't read every syllable though...
there is a direct link to the Kirov page of www.gismeteo.ru which is http://www.gismeteo.ru/weather/towns/27196.htm again here I could not find the GMT offset directly, but the page has an astronomic frame at the left side with a little moon, where the sunrise and sunset times are 4:21 and 20:53. This corresponds to GMT+4, which means GMT+3 with DST right now.
Two facts are interesting: (1) Many Russian pages with listings of local times in Russian cities have Kirov at the same local time as Moscow. (2) gismeteo.ru gives at the moment (2006-05-10) for Kirov a sunrise time of 4:21 and for Moscow 5:26. Note that the longitude of Moscow is at 37.62 E and Kirov is at 49.66 E. This is a difference of 12.04 degrees or 48.16 minutes With the NOAA Sunrise/Sunset Calculator <http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html> one can calculate for Moscow a sunrise on 2006-05-10 at 05:28h local time and for Kirov a sunrise at 04:25h local time, if BOTH timezones are set to UTC+3 and including DST. So: the gismeteo.ru information leads to the conclusion that Kirov is indeed at the same time as Moscow.
participants (3)
-
Jesper Norgaard Welen -
Oscar van Vlijmen -
Paul Eggert