Where is Santa? When Will He Arrive?
Written by Lucy Black   
Tuesday, 24 December 2019

Around the world children are eagerly awaiting Santa - which is something of a problem since he'll only arrive when they are fast asleep. However part of the Christmas Eve tradition is to track Santa's progress across the globe with an app - both mobile and desktop.

It was NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and it usually spends its time looking for dangerous incursions into air space that  started the idea of following Santa's progress. It's a story, dating back to 1955 that you probably already know - otherwise see NORAD Santa Tracker Celebrates Sixty Years. For a few years until 2012 Google teamed up with Norad to bring the tradition to the web - but then Microsoft became NORAD's Santa Tracker partner and in 2013 Google launched it own. Both the Google Santa Tracker (2016 version) and the Google Santa Tracker for Android app were open sourced on GitHub under the Apache 2 license so now there are quite a few forks.

NORAD19

 

According to Google, Santa's busy day delivering presents has is well underway and he is due to arrive where I am in just eight and a half hours - the info is is the green box which uses my location to work out when it will be the "wee small hours" when the whole household should be soundly asleep. 

googlexmas19a

 

Santa Tracking is confined to Christmas Eve and is a chance for Google and Bing maps to take the limelight. There are however games and educational activities for kids to play throughout December in the two versions of Santa's Village and in 2015 Google added a Coding Lab, so there is even some programming fun to be had there. New from Google for 2019 there is a bedtime story, which just what might be required to send excited children to sleep tonight. 

 santa19sq

More Information

Official NORAD Santa Tracker

Google Santa Tracker

 

Related Articles

Santa Trackers Part Of Our Tradition

Where In The World Is Santa? Google and NORAD Keep Track

NORAD Santa Tracker Celebrates Sixty Years

Google's Santa Tracker Introduces Coding Lab

Track Santa With Google And NORAD

Santa Sets Off - Track His Progress Across the Globe

Google and Microsoft Launch Rival Santa Trackers

Microsoft Santa Or Google Santa

 

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 24 December 2019 )