Depending on which country they are from, children might ask about Father Christmas, Papa Noel, Saint Nick or Santa Claus, but they all want to know one thing: where in the world the jolly old man and his sleigh full of gifts are on Christmas Eve.
For the 64th time, a popular program run by the US and Canadian militaries provided real-time updates on Santa’s progress to millions around the globe.
This year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) offered even more high-tech ways for children and parents to follow along.
Photo: Reuters
Operation NORAD Tracks Santa has evolved from a misdirected telephone call in 1955 to a trailer parked outside the command’s former lair deep inside Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD’s contemporary headquarters at Colorado’s Peterson Air Force Base.
Along the way, the tens of thousands of telephone calls fielded each year by NORAD volunteers have been augmented by an explosion of technology that lets millions track Saint Nick’s journey from the North Pole to the Pacific and Asia and from Europe to the Americas.
This year’s portals included Alexa, OnStar, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 3-D apps developed for mobile devices by Cesium, a Philadelphia-based IT and defense contractor.
Photo: AP
The apps integrated geospatial and satellite-positioning technology with high-resolution graphics that display the actual positions of the stars, sun and moon and the shadows they cast at any point in Santa’s journey.
It takes dozens of tech firms — including Google, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Bing Maps — to deliver the immersive effect for global Santa trackers, with about 15 million visits to the Web site alone last year.
It takes about 1,500 volunteers to field e-mails and the more than 140,000 telephone calls.
They staff phone banks equipped with monitors inside a building at Peterson, which offers a view of snow-capped Pikes Peak to the west.
More volunteers and firms donate food, water and coffee to those on Santa Watch.
“Hi Santa Trackers! Lots of kids are waiting to ask you about Santa,” a sign reads.
Volunteers are equipped with an Operations Center Playbook that helps ensure that each and every caller can go to sleep happy and satisfied on Christmas Eve.
Longtime Santa trackers are familiar with the NORAD-Santa story.
In 1955, US Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup — the commander on duty one night at NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command — fielded a call from a child who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a newspaper department store ad, thinking she was calling Santa.
A fast-thinking Shoup quickly assured his caller that he was — and a tradition was born.
Today, most early calls come from Japan and Europe, while the volume soars when the US and Canada wake up, program manager Preston Schlachter said.
For team members, once “Big Red” — Santa’s code name — is airborne, Schlachter said: “It’s off to the races.”
“I’ve never had a block of time move so quickly,” he said.
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