So Exactly What Time Zone Is The State Of Texas In?

Yes, some of you think this very obvious, but apparently, it's not.

Google Auto-Complete works based on previous requests, and when I typed in "Texas is..." the second most popular was "what time zone". So yes, many, many people need this clarified on a regular basis. It's my guess they do this mostly when trying to call or contact people in other time zones.

Time zones are a bit complicated. There are several states, including Texas that have different time zones. For instance, the tip of Texas near El Paso is actually Mountain Time zone (along with states like New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and others).

The bulk of Texas is actually Central Time Zone (along with Oklahoma, Louisiana, Minnesota, and others). It should be easy to remember, for us Texans, Texas is the center of the universe, and we are in the central time zone (can't quite figure out if that should be capitalized or not).

So many of the places we have to do business with nationally are on either the west coast or the east coast and this is where this information becomes important. Everything on the west coast is Pacific Time, which is two hours earlier. Everything on the east coast is Eastern Time which is one hour later. 

It's completely understandable how this can be confusing, because if you look at a map of the U.S. (the contiguous portion anyways) Texas is center bottom, so what is there a two-hour difference on the west coast, but only a one-hour difference in the east? I'm sure there's an answer somewhere, but whatever it is, we're not going to change it. Just remember, Texas is Central Time Zone.