Children no longer need to stand out in freezing weather with wide eyes scanning the night sky in hopes of seeing Santa Claus’ sleigh. These days, all they need is a computer and an internet hookup.
Working today and well into the night are volunteers at NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, where about 900 people are toiling away in a Peterson Air Force Base building to track Santa Claus’ progress and to answer calls from eager chimney-watchers.
“Basically, they just want to know where Santa is and when he’ll get to their town,” said Master Sgt. Anthony Hill, a NORAD spokesman.
“You’ll get some who ask technical questions – ‘Can you call Santa?’ ‘Can you hit him up on his BlackBerry?’ But we don’t communicate with Santa. We track him through Rudolph’s red nose.”
They also get the help from sophisticated equipment, including satellites, “Santa cams,” radars and Google Earth technology, NORAD spokesperson Lt. Cmdr Gary Ross said. Military jets also escort Santa, Ross added, even though the aircraft are slower than the reindeer-led sleigh.
As of noon, Santa reportedly was near Lithuania, but on schedule to arrive in Colorado between 9 p.m. and midnight, according to operators at the hotline.
The Santa trackers are a tech-savvy bunch: The Web site has been operational since 1998, and last year got 941 million page views, according to Hill, and about 65,000 people called in.
NORAD has been tracking the red-suited traveler since Dec. 24, 1955, when a Sears & Roebuck ad mistakenly switched the phone number of a Santa hotline with NORAD’s – then known as the Continental Air Defense Command.
The military man on the receiving end of the calls that Christmas Eve, Col. Harry Shoup, decided to play along with children’s requests to find Santa Claus, and a tradition was born.
For nearly a decade, northern New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory also has launched a web site on Christmas Eve to track Santa’s journey around the globe.
The site – – monitors Santa as he leaves the North Pole and heads west toward the International Date Line.
The hourly updates of his journey began at 6 a.m. today.
Christa Marshall in the Denver Post’s Washington bureau contributed to this report.
