{"id":93917,"date":"2022-12-22T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/u-s-officials-covid-bomb-cyclone-wont-slow-santas-travels\/"},"modified":"2022-12-22T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T07:30:00","slug":"u-s-officials-covid-bomb-cyclone-wont-slow-santas-travels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/u-s-officials-covid-bomb-cyclone-wont-slow-santas-travels\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. officials: COVID, bomb cyclone won’t slow Santa’s travels"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article has been moved in front of the Empire’s paywall. <\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n

The U.S. military agency known for tracking Santa Claus as he delivers presents on Christmas Eve doesn’t expect COVID-19 or the ” bomb cyclone ” hitting North America to affect Saint Nick’s global travels.<\/p>\n

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is responsible for monitoring and defending the skies above North America.<\/p>\n

But the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based agency also runs the NORAD Tracks Santa service, which allows people to follow his Christmas journey through its noradsanta.org website, social media channels and mobile app.<\/p>\n

The agency this year plans to have about 1,500 volunteers working on Christmas Eve to field phone calls from children who want to know Santa’s location and delivery schedule.<\/p>\n

Lt. General David Nahom, a NORAD official based in Anchorage, Alaska, said the pandemic has not affected Santa’s busy delivery schedule and he doesn’t expect any impact this weekend.<\/p>\n

The freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall that’s disrupting holiday travel in the U.S. shouldn’t be a problem for a man who lives at the North Pole, Nahom said.<\/p>\n

“I think Santa will be right at home with the Arctic weather that’s hitting into the lower 48,” Nahom said.<\/p>\n

NORAD’s holiday tradition began in 1955 after a kid mistakenly called a Colorado military command asking to speak to Santa. More calls came in so the commander on duty assigned an officer to answer the Santa calls, and the tradition took hold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article has been moved in front of the Empire’s paywall. <\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":93918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-93917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93917"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=93917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}