NORAD vs Google: Where is Santa, really?

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Millions of children worldwide await the arrival of Santa Claus each Christmas. For decades, NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — has been tracking Santa in an increasingly technological fashion.

Now, not only can you track Santa on line with the NORAD Santa Tracker, you can also watch as he flies around the world and delivers presents that are automatically counted.

But wait! NORAD doesn’t have a monopoly on tracking Santa anymore. Enter Google — which tracks just about everything.

The problem is: NORAD and Google show Santa simultaneously in different parts of the world. How can that be?

What will parents tell their inquisitive kids who check both sites? And what’s the answer when kids ask how can Santa possibly go around the world in just one night?

Here are some answers you can use:

• Being an agency that tracks everything flying in and around North America, NORAD shows a delay to the public on the Santa Tracker for his own safety. Because of that tactical operation delay, there is going to be a difference between NORAD’s tracker and the Google tracker.
• Google started tracking Santa at a different time and from a different time zone, and their track is based on when they began.
• Because Google’s tracker is more clip-art than webcam, the GPS triangulation is going to show a slightly different place as to where the Jolly Old Elf is at a given moment.
• Santa actually has 48 hours to deliver the presents. He and the reindeer take advantage of the global time zones by starting at the International Date Line and traveling west.
• Santa creates a custom configuration of spacetime similar to Star Trek’s warp drive.

Of course if something was to happen to Santa on his journey around the world, Tim Allen can always step in.