The Kirov case

[Oscar van Vlijmen]

> From: Jesper Norgaard Welen
....
> has a direct link to the official Kirov Oblast web page in russian:
> http://www.gov-vyatka.ru/
> this web site doesn't seem to have a direct mentioning of the GMT offset,
> althought I admit my 3 years college russian is not very able any more, but
I can't find any reference to local time either by itself or with respect to
Moscow. Haven't read every syllable though...

> there is a direct link to the Kirov page of www.gismeteo.ru which is
> http://www.gismeteo.ru/weather/towns/27196.htm
> again here I could not find the GMT offset directly, but the page has an
> astronomic frame at the left side with a little moon, where the sunrise and
> sunset times are 4:21 and 20:53. This corresponds to GMT+4, which means
> GMT+3 with DST right now.

Two facts are interesting:

(1) Many Russian pages with listings of local times in Russian cities have
Kirov at the same local time as Moscow.

(2) gismeteo.ru gives at the moment (2006-05-10) for Kirov a sunrise time of
4:21 and for Moscow 5:26.
Note that the longitude of Moscow is at 37.62 E and Kirov is at 49.66 E.
This is a difference of 12.04 degrees or 48.16 minutes
With the NOAA Sunrise/Sunset Calculator
<http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html>
one can calculate for Moscow a sunrise on 2006-05-10 at 05:28h local time
and for Kirov a sunrise at 04:25h local time, if BOTH timezones are set to
UTC+3 and including DST.
So: the gismeteo.ru information leads to the conclusion that Kirov is indeed
at the same time as Moscow.