Phoenix

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Seven Clock Changes on One Drive

Maricopa County's golf courses use more than 80 million gallons of water a day for irrigation. Government figures put golf water consumption in and around Phoenix higher than anywhere else in the United States.

Phoenix gets about eight inches of rain a year.

Across Arizona, 219 golf courses used 119,478 acre-feet of water in 2019 — roughly 39 billion gallons. The average Arizona resident uses about 146 gallons a day, and up to 70% of household water goes outside: lawns, pools, washing cars. Phoenix has cut per-person consumption from around 250 gallons a day in 1990 to roughly 108 today, but the shape of the city is still an oasis maintained by pipework.

The clock: and it is the desert heat that explains the other strange thing about this place.

Arizona does not observe daylight saving time. It tried it in 1967 and the legislature rejected it in 1968, on the grounds that an extra hour of evening sun in a desert means an extra hour of air conditioning. A 1969 study found DST raised electricity use in Phoenix by 1 to 4%.

So Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time all year — and because its own clock never moves, its relationship to everyone else flips twice a year. For four winter months Phoenix matches Denver. For the other eight it matches Los Angeles.

Then there is the northeast corner, which is the best time zone map in the world.

The Navajo Nation does observe daylight saving, because its territory extends into Utah and New Mexico, which do. The Hopi Reservation, entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation, does not — it follows the rest of Arizona. There is also a smaller piece of Navajo Nation inside the Hopi Nation inside the Navajo Nation, and a separate Hopi area adjacent to the main one.

Drive the correct route across that corner of Arizona during daylight saving months and you will change your clock seven times.

Not because you crossed a meridian. Because you crossed a jurisdiction.

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