BUG: pytz.exceptions.UnknownTimeZoneError: 'US/Eastern'

[sebastic]

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of geopandas.

• (optional) I have confirmed this bug exists on the main branch of geopandas.

---

Problem description

tzdata (2023c-8) in Debian no longer provides the US timezones:

  * Ship only timezones in tzdata that follow the current rules of geographical
    region (continent or ocean) and city name. Move all legacy timezone symlinks
    (that are upgraded during package update) to tzdata-legacy. This includes
    dropping the special handling for US/* timezones. (Closes: #1040997)

This causes the test suite to fail with an exception:

pytz.exceptions.UnknownTimeZoneError: 'US/Eastern'

Using America/New_York instead resolves the issue:

--- a/geopandas/io/tests/test_file.py
+++ b/geopandas/io/tests/test_file.py
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ def test_to_file_bool(tmpdir, driver, ex


 TEST_DATE = datetime.datetime(2021, 11, 21, 1, 7, 43, 17500)
-eastern = pytz.timezone("US/Eastern")
+eastern = pytz.timezone("America/New_York")

 datetime_type_tests = (TEST_DATE, eastern.localize(TEST_DATE))

[jorisvandenbossche]

@sebastic thanks for the report!