PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -You can follow Santa as he makes his way from the North Pole on his flight around the world this Christmas Eve - just check out the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site.
The Web site is at (www.noradsanta.org).
For more than 50 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and its predecessor, the Continental Defense Command, have tracked Santa's Christmas Eve flight around the world, according to NORAD.
Located at Peterson Air Force Base at Colorado Springs, Colo., the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center gets up-to-the-minute status reports from its radar, satellites, and Santa cams on Christmas Eve so they can report the current status of Santa.
Before Christmas Eve, you can visit the site for updates from the North Pole, get the countdown of days, hours, minutes and seconds until Santa begins his journey and other information.
For tracking Santa, the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center will open Christmas Eve Dec. 24 at 5 a.m. CST and remain open until 4 a.m. CST on Christmas Day.
In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created the bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD. NORAD inherited the tradition of tracking Santa.
The tradition of tracking Santa began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline." The director of operations at the time, Col. Harry Shoup, had his staff check radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.
Since that time, many people volunteered their time to personally respond to Christmas Eve phone calls and e-mails from children. The NORAD volunteers now track Santa using the Internet. Last year, millions of people who wanted to know Santa's whereabouts visited the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site.