Santa Claus is coming to Google Earth

It’s that time of year again, and NORAD is once again preparing their very popular “Santa Tracker” to follow Santa around the world on Christmas Eve. The new 2010 site has just gone live in preparation for the holiday.

Last year’s tracker was astoundingly popular, with over 13 million people from 231 countries visiting the NoradSanta.org site, and I’d expect that number to keep growing every year.

Santa Tracker

Of course, the actual tracker doesn’t go live until December 24. In the meantime, they introduce new games every day in “Santa’s Village“. They tend to be rather simple games (yesterday was tic-tac-toe), but the music and environment add some fun if you play them with your kids.

NORAD (and its predecessor, CONAD) have been tracking Santa every year since 1955. The addition of tools such as Google Earth and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have only served to help increase the spread the of this fun tradition. To keep up with the latest happenings from the North Pole, you can join their Facebook Page (with a remarkable 386,000 fans) or follow them on twitter at @NoradSanta.

My girls will certainly be following along this year, as they had a great time watching him last year. How about you? Did you follow along last year with your kids? Looking forward to doing it again?

(via Lat Long Blog)