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NORAD Santa Tracker 2020: How to follow Santa’s journey this Christmas

Santa will begin his journey in the North Pole (Getty)
Santa will begin his journey in the North Pole (Getty)

Christmas is here, and while it may look a little different this year, Santa will still be dropping by with a present or two.

Luckily, with modern technology, tracking Santa’s whereabouts is easier than ever.

Kids and parents (and every other Santa-lover) can track the festive fellow’s whereabouts this Christmas Eve using the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Google's Santa trackers.

How to track Santa’s journey using NORAD

NORAD is usually used to track aerospace in the event of a nuclear attack, but each Christmas it’s used to see what part of the world Santa’s sleigh is in at that very moment.

Around 9 million people from 200 countries tune in to watch Santa circumnavigate the world and it will launch on December 24 this year again.

To track Santa’s whereabouts, visit noradsanta.org

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What is Santa’s route?

After leaving his elves behind in Lapland, Santa gathers his reindeer (including Rudolph) to begin his 24-hour trip around the world.

To be able to visit every child, Santa travels at an estimated 1,800 mile per second as he needs to visit 390,000 homes per minute (this speed makes him nearly invisible to the naked eye).

Along the way, Santa will consume an estimated 71 million calories thanks to all the milk and cookies left out for him - enough to keep him going for the rest of the year.

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His journey always begins in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, before following time zones travelling to New Zealand, Australia and then Japan.

He continues through Asia, Europe and Africa (stopping in the UK along the way) before hopping over the Atlantic (via Iceland and Greenland) to North and South America.

His last stop will be Hawaii before he returns to the North Pole for a well-deserved rest.

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