NORAD(NEW YORK) — Where in the world is Santa Claus?
Using radar to track St. Nick from the North Pole and around the globe, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been able to answer this question for curious children awaiting presents every Christmas Eve for 61 years.
The “NORAD Tracks Santa” tradition began when a misprinted advertisement from Sears Roebuck & Co. in Colorado Springs had a telephone number listed for Santa that instead was the number for the operations hotline of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), NORAD’s predecessor.
NORAD’s Maj. Mary Ricks told ABC News that about 200,000 children from around the world called into the operations center last year and the U.S. and Canada joint organization was anticipating at least that many for 2016.
You may have fun tracking Santa from home, but don’t wait up to see if you can catch a glimpse of him, Ricks warned.
“We can only track Santa, but only Santa knows his route, which means we can’t predict when and where he’s going to arrive,” she told ABC News. “But what we do tell [the children] is that he only stops at their houses when they are asleep.”
Follow Santa as he makes his way to your house here.
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