WHETHER to deliver presents or coal, Santa Claus is coming to town!
His biggest day of the year has finally arrived and you can track him across the globe.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracks everything in the skies of Canada and the United States. On Christmas Eve, the command centre shifts its focus monitor Santa and his reindeer.
NORAD's Santa Tracker app goes live at 11am today (Christmas Eve) and will follow Santa to Scotland and beyond, finishing at his final drop-off.
Google's Santa tracker does the same job and launched at 10am. Those with Amazon Alexa can ask for Santa's location at any time on December 24.
Where does Santa go first?
Santa will first deliver gifts to boys and girls of the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean.
After that, he goes up to Japan, over to Asia, across to Africa, then onto Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central and South America.
However, Norad's website reads: "Santa’s route can be affected by weather, so it’s really unpredictable. NORAD coordinates with Santa’s Elf launch staff to confirm his launch time, but from that point on, Santa calls the shots. We just track him!"
What is NORAD?
NORAD has said it uses a combination of radar and satellites to monitor Santa's progress on Christmas Eve.
The mission began by accident back in 1955, when the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) received a phone call from a child who was trying to reach Santa and had dialled a misprinted phone number from a department store advert in the local newspaper.
The command centre has operated a special mission dedicated to tracking Santa every year since.
