All my clocks are acting strange

I’ve reset my clocks twice now in as many days.  It seem like they’ve got a mind of their own and are gaining several minutes a day.  If it was just one, I could understand and probably just replace it, but all of them?  Anyone else ever heard of such a thing?  How totally bizarre.

Yep it’s happening all over town. Has to do with our being taken off the provincial power grid due to the landslide between here and Terrace last week. We’re now on a couple of thermal generators which run on natural gas.

They apparently work on a different speed or some such thing and thus our clocks and such tend to run amok.

It’s going to be this way for about three more weeks as that’s how long BC Hydro figures it will take to get the new tower installed and hooked back up…

Unless of course another landslide takes out the natural gas lines and then…

well it’ll be pretty dark for awhile one thinks…

Thanks for the post, and glad I’m not alone.  Odd thing, I never thought that giving clocks more power would actually speed them up.  What fun one could have with that theory though, huh?  lol

On a good note, my little spruce tree has finally received it annual bud things, which will eventually spruce out like they do each year.  I thought the last warm weather we had would’ve done it, but then WAM… 3 FEET OF SNOW.  But yesterday I saw the bud things and am confident in saying that I think we’ve had our winter.  (I hope)

AC current in North America is regulated at 60Hz. If you plugged your clock into a 50Hz outlet overseas, you would more than likely lose 10 minutes per hour. See how many minutes you gain or lose per hour tomorrow and add or subtract from 60 to see what your outlet is giving you. A quartz clock would remain to keep good time since it uses the fequency of quartz rather than AC to keep time.

Well, my watch (solar powered eco drive) was 6:07PM and the digital clocks around the house all said 5:54PM.  I will check them tomorrow at ‘newshour’ I’ll see what they read.  I was in europe in the mid 80’s (Brussels) and had taken along my blow drier.  I also brought current converter.  Anyway, first thing in the morning I get out of the shower, sip coffee in a bathrobe, place my dryer on the sink and reach over to plug it in, forgetting the converter.  In transit, the on button was switched to the on position and when I plugged it in, it blew the drier right off the sink counter.  It happened so fast, that within seconds, I pulled the plug out of the wall.  I forgot to switch the 110/220 switch.  Luckily I didn’t blow the drier, but it sure scared the heck out of me.

Yep, my clocks are speeding up in my house.  I’m re-setting them every 3-4 days, they’re quickly gaining time. 
We are very fortunate to have those generators in place.  It would be next to impossible to live without power three weeks.  I’d go into withdrawal if I was off-line for that space of time, heh-heh… :smiley:

I measured the frequency of the AC power using an oscilloscope at work last week when I heard we were on generators and it is actually 60.07 to 60.08Hz. I am surprised at how many people are saying their digital clocks are affected. I would have thought that the digital clocks would have a stable reference IC for their time base regardless of the input power’s frequency.

Yes, it is strange.  Several of my house digital clocks are now three minutes fast.  I seem to be gaining a minute or two every other day.  Weird. :smiley:

Strange but true… if you say oscilloscope three times really fast and click your heels, your clocks return to the proper time! :smiley: