NORAD tracks Santa Claus as he delivers presents on Christmas Eve

Amazon Connect teams up with NORAD to help track Santa’s whereabouts this Christmas Eve

With NORAD’s live tracking and Amazon Connect’s assistance, everyone will know when Santa is due to squeeze down their chimney on Christmas Eve. Yes, Virginia, Santa does have a phone centre.

It’s almost as vital to know where Santa is on Christmas Eve as it is to know what he’s delivering. You can imagine how many questions Team Santa receives about his whereabouts as he and the reindeer make their annual trip across the world. Most of the time, it’s some variation of “When are you coming to my house?”

But Santa is too busy delivering gifts to give everyone an ETA, and calculating the arrival of a sleigh and eight or so reindeer travelling at what is presumably hypersonic speed is no easy task. Unless you work for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which does this all day.

NORAD normally keeps its data to itself, but since this is Santa, they have built up their yearly NORAD Tracks Santa website to provide tracking data. Beginning at 6 a.m. EST on December 24, children (and children at heart) can receive live updates on Santa’s whereabouts by dialling 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723).

Which begs the question: Who is answering the more than 150,000 calls, according to NORAD? As previously said, Santa is extremely busy, the elves are fatigued, and the reindeer dislike talking on the phone. Volunteers from throughout North America, using the cloud-based contact programme Amazon Connect, are the answer.

For the third year in a row, NORAD can easily transfer Santa-tracking requests to volunteers operating remotely when on-site volunteers become overburdened. Thousands of extra calls about Santa’s whereabouts from children all over the world are answered by remote volunteers.

The NORAD Tracks Santa programme, which is situated in Colorado Springs, Colorado, allows anyone to monitor Santa’s Christmas journey via the noradsanta.org website, social media channels, and mobile app.

This year, the organisation intends to have approximately 1,500 volunteers working on Christmas Eve to answer phone calls from children who want to know Santa’s location and delivery timetable.

NORAD official Lt. General David Nahom, based in Anchorage, Alaska, said he doesn’t expect Santa’s hectic delivery schedule to be disrupted this weekend.

The frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall that are delaying holiday travel in the United States shouldn’t be an issue for a man who lives near the North Pole, according to Nahom.

“I think Santa will be right at home with the Arctic weather that’s hitting into the lower 48,” Nahom said.

NORAD’s holiday tradition originated in 1955, when a child called a Colorado military command and asked to speak with Santa. As more requests came in, the commander on duty designated an officer to handle the Santa phone calls, and the tradition began.

No chimney? No problem! How Santa will visit astronauts on the International Space Station (video)

How will Santa arrive when every landing port on a space station is full?

The Expedition 68 team anticipates the jolly elf to pass through one of the International Orbit Station’s airlocks and will store their stockings there, four astronauts said in a video from space.

“Unfortunately, all of the docking ports are taken this year, so we’re expecting Santa to come through the airlock,” NASA astronaut Josh Cassada stated in the YouTube video (opens in new tab).

How to track Santa with Google?

Google Santa Tracker is an annual holiday-themed entertainment website initially launched in 2004. It stimulates the tracking of the fabled character Santa Claus on Christmas Eve using predefined GPS dat

Live Santa Tracker 2022 FAQs