Winter daylight saving time in Columbus, Indiana

Today is one of the days in Columbus, Indiana on which the folly of being on eastern time is most easily seen.

According to U.S. Code, the time zones were laid out to divide the winter daylight as evenly as possible between morning and evening.

On January 25, there are ten hours of daylight in Columbus. It's easy to see that the nominal sunrise and sunset today are 7:00 am and 5:00 pm -- five hours before midday and five after.

If Indiana were all back in the central time zone again (as we were until 1961), today's sunrise and sunset in Columbus would be 6:56 am and 4:56 pm -- within four minutes of nominal.

Since we're still on eastern time, today's sunrise and sunset are 7:56 am and 5:56 pm -- four hours before midday and 6 hours after -- effectively observing daylight saving time in the middle of winter and making for an abnormally late sunrise for our latitude this time of year.

Just for comparison, sunrise in Los Angeles today is 6:55 am, Chicago is 7:10, and New York City 7:12. Our sunrise is pretty out of touch with the norm in other major U.S. cities.