Western European Summer Time

Western European Summer Time (WEST) is a summer daylight saving time scheme, 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used in the following places:

  • the Canary Islands
  • Portugal (including Madeira but not the Azores)
  • Ireland
  • the United Kingdom
  • the British Crown dependencies
  • the Faroe Islands

Western European Summer Time is also known locally, in the countries concerned, as:

  • British Summer Time (BST) in the United Kingdom.
  • Irish Standard Time (IST) (Am Caighdeánach na hÉireann (ACÉ)) in Ireland. Also sometimes erroneously referred to as "Irish Summer Time" (Am Samhraidh na hÉireann).

The scheme runs from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October each year. At both the start and end of the schemes, clock changes take place at 01:00 UTC. During the winter, Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+0) is used.

The start and end dates of the scheme are somewhat asymmetrical in terms of daylight hours: the vernal time of year with a similar amount of daylight to late October is mid-February, well before the start of summer time. The asymmetry reflects temperature more than the length of daylight.

Ireland does not observe a summer time, but rather observes Standard Time during the summer months and changes to UTC+0 during the winter time period. However, as Ireland's winter time period begins on the last Sunday in October and finishes on the last Sunday in March, the result is the same.

Read more about Western European Summer Time:  Usage, Start and End Dates of British Summer Time and Irish Standard Time

Famous quotes containing the words western, european, summer and/or time:

    “One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
    —Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)

    “To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
    —For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
    And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
    And pirates of the universe, shut out
    Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
    Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
    The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
    Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
    And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.”
    —David Hume (1711–1776)