Houston, United States · UTC-5
Convert time from Houston
Houston runs on Central Standard Time, UTC-6 in winter and Central Daylight Time, UTC-5, from mid-March to early November. It shares the America/Chicago timezone with Chicago, Dallas, and Minneapolis.
The clock change happens the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. Houston follows standard US federal daylight saving law.
The energy capital’s trading clock
Houston is the center of the global oil and gas industry. The energy trading desks here coordinate with London (the ICE Futures exchange), New York (NYMEX), Dubai, and Singapore. Crude oil prices are quoted continuously 24 hours a day.
At UTC-6, Houston’s morning begins when London’s trading day is already half over. Energy traders in Houston are often at their desks by 6am to catch the tail end of the European market.
NASA and mission time
The Johnson Space Center in Houston controls human spaceflight missions, and mission operations run on a separate time system: Mission Elapsed Time (MET) counts from launch, not from any civil clock. Ground controllers work rotating shifts to cover continuous operations. “Houston” in “Houston, we have a problem” refers to this control center, operating on its own temporal logic independent of Central Time.
Convert 9am Houston time to other cities.
Sources
- IANA Time Zone Database
- Houston Chronicle
- Pratt, Joseph A. A Promising Field: Independent Oil in the Texas Panhandle. University of Texas Press, 1981.
Same time as Houston
Compare Houston with
Questions about time in Houston
- What timezone is Houston in?
- Houston is in Central Time (CT), using the IANA timezone
America/Chicago. The standard UTC offset is UTC-6 (CST) in winter and UTC-5 (CDT) during daylight saving time. - Does Houston observe daylight saving time?
- Yes. Houston observes daylight saving time, shifting from UTC-6 (standard time) to UTC-5 in summer.
- What is the current UTC offset for Houston?
- Houston is currently at UTC-5. It is currently observing daylight saving time.
- What is the time difference between Houston and New York?
- Houston is currently 1 hour behind New York.
- What is the time difference between Houston and London?
- Houston is currently 6 hours behind London.
- What is the time difference between Houston and Los Angeles?
- Houston is currently 2 hours ahead of Los Angeles.
- What is the time difference between Houston and Tokyo?
- Houston is currently 14 hours behind Tokyo. Tokyo does not observe daylight saving time, so this gap changes by 1 hour when Houston transitions to/from DST.
- What is the IANA timezone name for Houston?
- The IANA timezone database identifier for Houston is
America/Chicago. Use this string in programming languages and APIs: JavaScript (`new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-US', { timeZone: 'America/Chicago' })`), Python (`pytz.timezone('America/Chicago')`), or any IANA-compatible library.