Russia departs daylight saving time, returns to standard time this weekend, with an extra hour of sleep

In addition to the end of Central European Summer Time this weekend… the Russian News and Information Agency, Novosti, announced this weekend (October 25) that daylight saving time ends in Russia this Sunday “when the country will put clocks back one hour, giving people extra hour in bed.”

Nice to know that Novosti advocates sleeping in. ; )

“At 3:00 a.m. local time on Sunday clocks will be changed to 2:00 a.m. The changeover will begin with Russia’s easternmost territory of Chukotka and move westward through eleven time zones to the enclave region of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. Most of Europe will also change their clocks, although North America will wait another week.”

“Most computers will automatically adjust to the time change, but clocks and household appliances that show the time will have to be adjusted manually.”

Yes, and current versions of the Windows operating system should not require any change, as the DST and time zone settings for Russia are unchanged in 2008 from previous years.  Much of Russia follows Moscow Daylight Time (UTC +4:00h) when Russians start to observe daylight saving time on the last Sunday of March, and then follow Moscow Standard Time (UTC +3:00h) when they end DST on the last Sunday of October.  These changes are the same as the dates for the start and end of European Summer Time. 

Although it’s been reported that there was some discussion in Russia of discontinuing their observation of DST, no changes by the government have been decided as noted in my previous post.  From what I have been told, this has been discussed by the Russian parliament many times over the past several years, but no changes have been made.

For more general information from Microsoft Russia, check out the search results on microsoft.com.

[Added 102708] Remember: daylight saving time ends this weekend in much of the United States and Canada.  The difference in the changes between Europe and North America could cause some confusion… so watch your cross-Atlantic and Pacific meeting times.

Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS, DST, Russia; 4,880,000 (up from 4.3M a month ago); 1,940,000 (up from 900K a year ago, down 200K since last month)

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