Here comes Santa Claus, right down the radar screen

NORAD will track sleigh Christmas Eve.

"Now that the space shuttle is going to be up there for Christmas, maybe we'll ask NASA to pass along some data."

--- CANADIAN FORCES

MAJ. JAMIE ROBERTSON

By BEN WHITE

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON --- Rarely does the federal bureaucracy spring into action for a more critical mission than the one it undertakes around this time of year --- tracking Santa Claus.

That is right. When the portly present producer plops his considerable girth in his sleigh and giddyaps his reindeer into action on Christmas Eve, Uncle Sam will be watching --- with state- of-the-art radar and satellite technology and the power of the Internet.

As Santa soars into the night sky and begins his trek around the globe to bestow Pokemon toys and other goodies to the nice --- and, presumably, C-SPAN tapes of old congressional hearings to the naughty --- interested observers of all ages will be able to track his progress on the World Wide Web at www.noradsanta.org, a site maintained by the North American Aerospace Defense Command with an assist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NORAD has been in the business of Santa-tracking for 45 years, said Canadian Forces Maj. Jamie Robertson, who explained the history from agency headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. (NORAD is a joint U.S.-Canada command.)

In 1955, he said, a Colorado Springs newspaper carried an ad for a department store featuring the phone number for a Santa hot line that kids could call to plead for presents. Trouble was, the number was a misprint and actually led directly to the NORAD operations hot line.

All that Christmas, NORAD got calls from youngsters wanting to speak to Santa. Instead of explaining the mistake over and over to kids who had no idea what a NORAD was, staffers told them they would check the radar images and alert them to Santa's whereabouts. A tradition was born.

Kids can still call NORAD (719-474-3980, with parental permission, of course) to get a phone update and ask questions about Santa, but anyone with a computer and a modem can now log on to get up to speed on the Jolly One's movements beginning at midnight Dec. 23 and continuing until 5 a.m. Dec. 25.

The government's Santa watch has grown so popular --- the site had 80 million hits last year --- that NORAD now has several partners helping to make the tracking possible, including IBM, which will use the same servers it employed for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The site will be offered in six different languages.

NORAD also will get some help this year from astronaut Sally Ride in answering questions and analyzing the Santa tracking data.

All the Santa-trackers working the hot line in Colorado Springs are volunteers, and no taxpayer funds are being used to create or maintain the Santa site, Robertson said.

NOAA got involved this year, he said, because its Satellite Command and Data Acquisition Station in Fairbanks, Alaska, is uniquely positioned to monitor any unusual North Pole activity, which will be posted immediately on the site.

Tracking duties may even expand to other areas of the federal government this year.

"Now that the space shuttle is going to be up there for Christmas," Robertson said, "maybe we'll ask NASA to pass along some data."

Copyright 1999
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