Central time, explained
CDT. Central Daylight Time.
Central time is CDT right now — Central Daylight Time, UTC−5. It is 1:48 AM in Chicago.
Where you are
—
Your own clock, worked out when the page opens.
Sunrise
7:02 AM
11 h 09 min of daylight.
Sunset
6:11 PM
Golden hour from 5:33 PM.
The next change
1 Nov
CDT to CST: the clocks go back an hour. Sunset moves from 5:46 PM to 4:45 PM.
CST and CDT are two clocks, an hour apart.
“Central time” is a place's clock, not a fixed offset. From the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November it is Central Daylight Time, UTC−5; the rest of the year it is Central Standard Time, UTC−6. Writing CST in July, or reading a CST meeting as a CDT one, moves it by an hour — which is why this page never writes one for the other, and why every Sol page names the zone as the tables have it for the instant in question.
The zone id for most of it is America/Chicago. Central time covers Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma, most of Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Tennessee, and parts of South Dakota, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Florida; Manitoba keeps the same clock under America/Winnipeg. Saskatchewan does not: America/Regina keeps CST, UTC−6, all year, as Mexico City (America/Mexico_City) has since 2022.
The changes in 2026.
The light in Chicago now.
You stand at the middle of Chicago’s horizon. The dots are the sun’s path today. Walk the hours, or drag the sky to turn it.
How it knows.
The browser’s own tables
Every time here is read from the zone tables your browser carries, the IANA database by its zone id (America/Los_Angeles, not “Pacific”), never from an offset typed by hand. A zone’s name is what the tables say for the moment asked: PDT in a Pacific summer, PST in its winter.
Hours the clocks change
A clock change removes an hour in spring and repeats one in autumn. Both are reported rather than moved: an hour that does not exist is named, with the time the clock reads instead, and an hour that happens twice is given both ways.
The light beside the clock
An hour alone says nothing about the sky, so each clock stands beside its day’s light, worked out for the city from the sun’s position. The pages are rebuilt every night, and every time is worked out again in your browser when the page opens.
Convert it, or read another clock.
Pacific time, explainedPST or PDT, and when Mountain time, explainedMST or MDT, and when Eastern time, explainedEST or EDT, and when UK time, explainedGMT or BST, and whenEvery place, its own light.
Sol for iPhone is coming soon, with your places side by side under their own skies, each on its own clock. Leave your address for one email when it ships.
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