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AKT · UTC−9 standard · UTC−8 daylight · 1 state · Aleutians west of 169°30′W excluded
Alaska Time Zone map
The Alaska Time Zone covers all of Alaska except the westernmost Aleutian Islands. It is one hour behind Pacific time and four behind Eastern, and it is the only zone used by a single state.
Offset and daylight saving
Alaska Standard Time (AKST) is UTC−9 and Alaska Daylight Time (AKDT) is UTC−8, observed on the same dates as the rest of the country: second Sunday in March to first Sunday in November. In summer Anchorage is therefore on the same offset as Pacific Standard Time. Daylight saving has little practical effect at Alaska's latitudes — Fairbanks gets about 22 hours of daylight at the June solstice and under 4 hours in December — but the state keeps it to stay a fixed hour behind Seattle.
What the zone covers
The zone includes the entire mainland, the Alaska Panhandle around Juneau, Kodiak Island, the Pribilofs and the Aleutian chain as far west as 169°30′W, just beyond Unalaska. The islands beyond that line — Atka, Adak, Shemya and Attu — are on Hawaii-Aleutian time, UTC−10, though unlike Hawaii they do observe daylight saving.
One zone for a state that spans four
Alaska stretches across about 57 degrees of longitude, from 130°W in the Panhandle to 173°E at Attu — wider than the contiguous 48 states. By solar time it should span four zones. Until 1983 it did: the Panhandle was on Pacific time, Anchorage and Fairbanks on Yukon time (UTC−9), and the west and the Aleutians on Bering time (UTC−11). In 1983 the state consolidated onto a single zone at UTC−9 (with the Aleutian exception) so that Juneau, Anchorage and Nome would share a business day. The result is that solar noon in Nome falls at about 2 pm on the clock.
Cities on Alaska time
| City | Region of Alaska | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Anchorage | Southcentral | 291,247 |
| Fairbanks | Interior | — |
| Juneau | Southeast (Panhandle) | — |
| Sitka | Southeast | — |
| Ketchikan | Southeast | — |
| Wasilla | Southcentral | — |
| Kenai | Southcentral | — |
| Kodiak | Southwest | — |
| Bethel | Southwest | — |
| Nome | West | — |
Anchorage holds about two-fifths of the state's people. Only its 2020 figure is in this site's data; the other cities are listed for location, not size.
Where the boundaries are
The eastern boundary is the international border with Canada (Yukon and British Columbia), which is on Pacific time; crossing from Skagway into Yukon means moving the clock forward an hour in winter (Yukon abolished seasonal changes in 2020 and stays on UTC−7 all year, so the gap is two hours in winter and one in summer). The western boundary is the 169°30′W meridian in the Aleutians. Across the Bering Strait, Russia's Chukotka is on UTC+12, twenty-one hours ahead — the Diomede Islands, 2.4 miles apart, are separated by a day.
Converting from Alaska time
- Noon in Anchorage is 1 pm Pacific, 2 pm Mountain, 3 pm Central, 4 pm Eastern and 11 am in Honolulu (10 am during daylight time).
- Noon AKST is 21:00 UTC; noon AKDT is 20:00 UTC.
Other zones
Eastern · Central · Mountain · Pacific · Hawaii-Aleutian · all zones
See also the Alaska state map, Pacific division and the state high points list, which Alaska tops with Denali.