D-train wrote: ↑Tue Apr 11, 2023 7:31 pm
Almost 200 miles by car. Would you say Seattle is firmly in Washington or barely.
Well, this seems like a weird position to double down on...especially since I already admitted my time zone hypothesis was wrong...but if you insist: Chicago is on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone. No matter how dice and define "firmly", it's not firmly in it.
I am not sure how you got 200 miles, but I am guessing you Google-mapped it which, if true, likely means you chose a city on the eastern edge of central time zone. Driving there almost certainly means you have to drive south around Lake Michigan and then north again. Even so, from Chicago to New Carlisle Indiana (which is in the ETZ) is only 86 miles by car.
Moreover, the time zone divisions are not straight lines. If you got in a boat and headed due east from Chicago on Lake Michigan, you be in the ETZ in only 20 miles, as the crow flies.
Split the difference - let's say 40 miles from the ETZ line. At it's widest, the CTZ is about 1300 miles wide (from about Rugby, Tennessee to about Pecos, Texas). By my math, Chicago is only 3% inside the CTZ. I wouldn't call that firmly.
Chicago is so close to the ETZ (and so far north, relatively speaking), that there have been efforts to move it to the ETZ rather than leaving it in Central. And in fact it was historically moved there for a year, but business and the Chicago Stock Exchange refused to go with it, so they reverted.
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/de ... tern-time/
Anyhew...all of this makes it sound like a have a dog in the fight which I don't. I admitted my hypothesis was wrong. Justifiable, but wrong. But I still wouldn't say that Chicago was firmly in the Central Time Zone.