Santa Tracker

The map and every city's time are here all through November and December. On Christmas Eve Santa leaves the North Pole at 5:00 AM Eastern, and the map follows him live, round the world and across America, until he is home at 6:00 AM Eastern on Christmas Day. He reaches Maine, his first American stop, at 9:00 PM Eastern.

Between 9 PM and midnight where you live, once the children are asleep. He crosses America one time zone at a time: Eastern from 9:00 PM, then Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii, so every town gets a time in its own evening. Put your ZIP code in the box to see your own city or town's time. He only lands when everyone is asleep, so bedtime matters more than the clock.

The flight plan is ours and it is for fun: we work out Santa's route and times from a timetable, so everyone sees the same sleigh at the same moment. The weather alerts are real, read from the National Weather Service, and so are the sunset times and the distances. For the worldwide trackers, NORAD has followed Santa every Christmas Eve since 1955, and Google runs its own Santa Tracker.

The tracker is free and there is nothing to sign up for. Your ZIP code stays in your browser: it reads a small file from our site that covers every ZIP code starting with the same three digits, and finds yours inside it. The full ZIP code is never sent to us or anyone else, and it is not stored.