From the discussion with jonglee marcus and mpbrenna

We tracked the state of time zones when parsing and ingesting data into Medici, then showing it on the Dashboard. There are four key phases where time zones might come into play. Here are the key points:

• Data from the Data Source (USGS was the example): the time zones for data comes in localized as CDT, CST, etc. Note that it may differ depending on the Data Source, and that it changes depending on the time of year and sensor location.
• Parser Script: this doesn't modify the time zone at all, but when creating data for the Water New Year, it should be using the localized time zone for that particular sensor. (October 1st is the Water New Year, which is still in Daylight Savings Time)
• Medici API: this converts all date-times to UTC. We need to determine if it also keeps track of what the localized time was before conversion.
• Geodashboard: this does not convert data-times back to the localized time zone (at least, not to my knowledge).

jonglee proposed adding an item to the application's config object, with the possibility of making this an option for the user to change on the Dashboard. Ideally, Geodashboard would be able to parse the UTC time and display using the localized time automatically, based on the sensor and the datapoint.