Dec 24, 2010 at 12:01pm ET by Danny Sullivan
NORAD’s Santa Tracking Monopoly
I’ve been writing about Santa tracking for five years now. Back in 2005, there were a variety of Santa tracking services out there. Since then, most of them have given up and simply point to NORAD Tracks Santa. That’s fine — NORAD does a great job.
NORAD is the joint US-Canadian missile tracking organization. But for more than 50 years, NORAD has also been tracking Kris Kringle due to a misprinted phone number. Since 2007, NORAD partnered formally with Google to produce an entire suite of Jolly St. Nick monitoring tools.
Below, a close-up of specific options from NORAD, with links to the English-language instructions. Need another language? Select from the NORAD site’s home page. After NORAD, I’ll also cover what alternatives remain.
NORAD’s Santa Map & Videos
Using high speed photography, along with fighter jets, satellites in orbit and radar installations to locate him, NORAD films Santa Claus as he passes over landmarks in countries around the world. A map shows where he’s been:
Above, you can see I snapped this image when Father Christmas was in Jakarta, Indonesia — as shown at the bottom of the screenshot.
If you click on Santa himself, you’ll see his current location:
Click on any of the gift icons to read more about places he’s already been to:
Finally, select any of the video camera icons you’ll see over select cities, and you’ll be treated to Santa doing a fly-by of local landmarks:
There’s also a Videos page that lists videos of all places that Santa has visited so far:
A collection of videos can also be found on the NORAD Tracks Santa YouTube channel.
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