Military Tracks Storybook Flight Of St. Nick For 60th Year

(AP) - For the 60th consecutive year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command will continue its tradition of telling youngsters the location of Santa Claus on his annual storybook world tour.

The so-called Santa Tracker's hub is at Colorado's Peterson Air Force base, where hundreds of volunteers will be answering calls from an estimated 125,000 children around the globe looking for Santa's whereabouts.

In places like Alaska, however, remote NORAD identification technicians who monitor computer screens 24 hours a day for possible air incursions also spend Christmas Eve serving as official Santa "trackers."

Tech. Sgt. John Gordinier, an Alaska NORAD spokesman, says the technicians in Canada and the U.S. report "sightings" of a sleigh full of toys pulled by flying reindeer.