NORAD Tracks Santa is featured on today’s Let’s Talk Knoxville.

Col. Mike Hayek with NORAD talks about the history of the organization tracking Santa and he provides details about Santa’s upcoming Christmas Eve journey. NORAD, which is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, started tracking Santa’s journey on Christmas Eve in 1955 when a young child called into NORAD’s command center accidentally to ask where Santa was located. The organization which uses radar then scrambled to provide the child with confirmation that Santa was on track delivering presents. Col. Hayek says that Santa will most likely be in Iowa between 9:00 pm and Midnight, but if kids are still awake, he will double back once they have fallen asleep. Hayek says NORAD is able to monitor his journey to make sure everything runs smoothly. 

“In general Santa takes off from the North Pole and travels from north to south in a westerly direction. Through our systems and sensors we can monitor the airspace and our global network of allies and partners help feed us information so we know what time zone Santa is flying through and what region he’s in so that’s how we stay up to date.”

To track Santa on Christmas Eve through NORAD you can use this link.