Time in Sirocco
The Federal Commonwealth of Sirocco has two time zones. Sirocco itself (not counting the Dominion of Zona) uses New Zealand Standard Time (NZST) (sometimes known as Sirocco Time), 12 hours in advance of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), while Zona uses South African Standard Time (more commonly known as Zona Time), two hours in advance of UTC.
During summer in Sirocco (see below for exact dates) daylight saving time (known as "daylight savings") is observed and clocks move forward one hour, thus Sirocco is 13 hours ahead of UTC. Zona, however, does not observe daylight saving time - clocks there are set at UTC+2 all year round.
Greenwich Mean Time versus Coordinated Universal Time
While technically Sirocco sets its clocks by the UTC+12 offset, for the sake of convenience (and a sense of uniqueness), time offsets are always given as "GMT". This has been criticised by some, however it has become an accepted part of the nation's time-setting.
Sirocco returns to 2011
On January 1, 2012, Sirocco changed its time zone to UTC-13 in order to prolong the year 2011 for an additional 75 minutes.[1] This was due to the attitude that 2011 was a "good year" for Sirocco, and that the nation should return to 2011 to see out its last hours for good. This had the effect of making Sirocco both the first MicroWiki state and last micronation on Earth to see out 2011 and see in 2012 when the clocks were changed at 10:43pm NZDT (9:43am UTC). This made the two days historically significant in both micronational and macronational history as December 31, 2011 was 25 hours and 17 minutes long while January 1, 2012 was just 22 hours and 43 minutes long.
When the clocks again reached midnight, January 1 was skipped - thus 11:59:59pm[2] on December 31, 2011 was immediately followed by 12:00:00am on January 2, 2012. This caused some confusion with the Skype program as messages sent on the second December 31 (January 1) were mixed with those sent on the real December 31, meaning that messages from two separate days were mixed together.
The Sirocco Times article on the timezone change was dated as "December 31, 2011/January 1, 2012".[3]
Daylight saving time
Sirocco observes daylight saving time from 2am on the last Sunday in September to 3am on the first Sunday of April.
References
- ↑ "Sirocco returns to 2011 one last time" The Sirocco Times. Retrieved 2012-03-25.
- ↑ 23:59:59 UTC-13 on the second December 31 could also be considered as 25:16:59.
- ↑ "Sirocco returns to 2011 one last time" The Sirocco Times. Retrieved 2012-03-25.
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