Let's track Santa with NORAD

For over 70 years, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) have been tracking Santa Claus each Christmas Eve, as he travels from the North Pole to all countries of the world on Christmas Eve.

Track Santa with NORAD

The origins of this are shrouded in the myseteries of time but what we do know is that back on Christmas Eve, 1948, The United States Air Force issued a communique stating that an 'early warning radar net to the north' had detected 'one unidentified sleigh, powered by eight reindeer, at 14,000 feet, heading 180 degrees'.  

Associated Press pass this 'report' to the general public and was intended as a one off event.

Image © National Air and Space Museum Smithonian

That was until 1955 when, according to legend, the Sears Department Store ran a promotion encouraging children to phone Santa.  Published in a Colorado Springs newspaper, the number publish was allegedly misprinted with one digit being out. 

​Instead of going through to the intended Santa Hot Line, they were put through to Colorado Springs; Continental Air Defence Command (CONAD) a predecessor to NORAD.

It would have ended there, with a misrouted phone number had it not been for a true hero; Colonel Harry Shoup, crew commander on duty at the time, who answered the first call and is said to have told his staff to give any child who called a 'current location' for Santa Claus.

Then one enterprising member of Colonel Shoup's staff used a picture of Santa on the board to track unidentified aircraft, that December.  Shoup contacted CONAD's public affairs officer Colonel Barney Oldfield and between them, they contacted the press to tell them that 'CONAD, Army, Navy, and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas'

But, running a hotline takes an awful amount of people and the phone lines are staffed by volunteers with reports of around 40 calls per hour, per person and the team dealing with over 12,000 emails and 100,000 telephone calls from more than two hundred countires and territories.  Bearing in mind that this tracker doesn't open until Christmas Eve, the pones are normally manned for 20 hours starting at 4am, finishing at midnight MST on Christmas Day.

To give you an idea of the size of the opperation, in 2015, 1,200 US and Canadian military personnel volunteered to staff the phone lines.  By 2018 this had risen to 1,500 volunteers and by 2019, the wonderful noradsanta.org website had received 8.9 million visitors.

Colonel Shoup has intended it to be a one off.  However in 1956 Associated Press and United Press International informed Oldfield that they were waiting for updates from CONAD on their tracking of Santa Claus.  Shoup agreed, Oldfield announced it and a tradition was born.

By 1958 when NORAD took over reporting responsibilities from CONAD, the information being reported was growing and in 1981 NORAD opening published a hotline for the general public to call and get updates on Santa's progress.

NORAD Santa Tracker, online  noradsanta.org  has been up and running on the internet since 1997 at the dawn of commercial internet sites.

If you visit during January to the end of November you are greeted with a message to come back on 1st December.  From the 1st, the website has information on the Santa tracker, games and other activities.  Once it gets to 24th December in the site chanes to show Santa's journey with mini videos at world-wide landmarks.

What is amazing is that the Santa tracker is run by volunteers and corporate sponsorship.  It received no money from US or Canadian taxpayers.