NORAD Tracks Santa's Flight For 60th Year
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- For the 60th consecutive year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is continuing its tradition of telling youngsters the location of Santa Claus on his annual storybook world tour.
The so-called Santa Tracker's hub is at Colorado's Peterson Air Force base, where hundreds of volunteers will be answering calls from an estimated 125,000 children around the globe looking for Santa's whereabouts.
In places like Alaska, however, remote NORAD identification technicians who monitor computer screens 24 hours a day for possible air incursions also spend Christmas Eve serving as official Santa "trackers.''
Tech. Sgt. John Gordinier, an Alaska NORAD spokesman, says the technicians in Canada and the U.S. report "sightings'' of a sleigh full of toys pulled by flying reindeer.
NORAD says its Santa-tracking rite was born of a humble typo in a newspaper ad in 1955.
The ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper invited children to call Santa but inadvertently listed the phone number for the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor, also based in Colorado Springs.
CONAD officers played along, and word spread that this Cold War military command charged with guarding the U.S. against an attack by the Soviet Union was also telling kids where Santa was.
Since then, NORAD Tracks Santa has gone global, progressing through bulletins on AM radios and black-and-white TVs to updates on Facebook, Twitter and smartphone aps.
As of Thursday morning, Santa had already visited Australia, Japan and South Korea and was seen flying over the Great Wall of China.
So when will Saint Nick be in the Tri-State area? Check out Santa's flight path on NORAD's official tracker here.
You can also follow Santa's progress on NORAD's Santa Twitter page or on Facebook.
They can also send an email to noradtracksanta(at)outlook.com.
Children can call a toll-free number, 877-446-6723 (877-Hi-NORAD) and speak to a live phone operator about Santa's whereabouts.
NORAD has 157 telephone lines and hundreds of volunteers ready to answer calls, including first lady Michelle Obama, who takes a break from her Hawaii vacation to take forwarded calls.
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