(Yahoo photo)
NORAD Santa trackers expected record holiday telling children about big man's location
Every year millions of children log in to http://www.noradsanta.org to track "Santa" around the world.
FILE - In this Dec. 24, 2010 file photo, Air Force Lt. Col. David Hanson, of Chicago, takes a phone call from a child in Florida at the Santa Tracking Operations Center at Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, Colo. Santa is already piling up monster numbers on social networking sites this season, so the volunteer Santa-trackers at NORAD are bracing for tens of thousands of calls and emails when their operations center goes live on Christmas Eve. (AP Photo)
Volunteers NORAD Tracks Santa at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado were fielding 4,000 calls an hour Saturday morning, on pace to break a record. Santa's NORAD Facebook page exceeded 840,000 "likes" by midmorning.
The North American Aerospace Defence Command has been telling children about Santa's whereabouts every year since 1955, when a newspaper ad invited kids to call Santa on a hotline. A typo led dozens of kids to call the command.
The officers on duty played along and began sharing reports on Santa's progress. It's now a deep-rooted tradition at NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canada command.
NORAD Santa trackers flooded with calls.
ReplyDeleteDENVER - Santa's trackers at the North American Aerospace Defence Command say they are breaking records this Christmas Eve.
Volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado were fielding 8,000 calls an hour Saturday afternoon, on pace to break a record, as they told the mostly young callers where Santa was flying.
Volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa said kids started calling at 4 a.m. Saturday to find out where Santa was.
"The phones are ringing like crazy," Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis said Saturday.
The NORAD has been telling anxious children about Santa's whereabouts every year since 1955. That was the year a Colorado Springs newspaper ad invited kids to call Santa on a hotline, but the number had a typo, and dozens of kids wound up talking to the Continental Aerospace Defence Command, NORAD's predecessor.
The officers on duty played along and began sharing reports on Santa's progress. It's now a deep-rooted tradition at NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canada command that monitors the North American skies and seas from a control centre at Peterson.
NORAD's Santa updates are blowing up on social media, too. In addition to the website and Facebook and Twitter pages, Santa this year has a new tracking app for smart phones. The app includes the Elf Toss, a game similar to Angry Birds.
Santa's NORAD Facebook page exceeded 920,000 "likes" by midafternoon. Last year, Santa had 716,000 "likes."
First lady Michelle Obama was among the volunteers for a second year in a row. She took about 10 calls from her family's holiday vacation in Hawaii. Lewis said Obama's voice didn't startle any of the phoning children.
"They all just asked run-of-the-mill stuff. They wanted to know about Santa," Lewis said.
(Toronto Star Dec.24'11)
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