If you’re dreaming of a White Christmas, the dream may be as close as you get. It’s the season for unseasonably (1) ________ temperature in the U.S. With 321 million people, it’s the world’s third most populated country. Over the weekend, 75 percent of that (2) _________ felt temperatures greater than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s more like late September than mid-December. Meteorologists are (3) __________ El Nino. It’s a natural phenomenon caused by warm temperatures over the Pacific Ocean, and it can affect weather patterns around the world, (4) __________ in the U.S. It’s keeping cold air bottled up in the Arctic, instead of spilling south. Nearly the entire country is asking the same (5) ________, where is winter? Who took it? That would be El Nino. Where is win ter? That’s exactly what we’d (6) ________ in a very strong El Nino year. If we (7) _________ 1982, 1997, what happened in those years, exactly this—much warmer than normal temperatures across the (8) _________ half of the United States. Last year, Buffalo had “Snow-vember”. This year, not a flake on the (9) _________. And although January and February shape up the same above normal, above normal if your normal is 15, is still cold enough to make big snow. This is (10) ________ an El Nino pattern, a very strong El Nino pattern. Warmer than normal across the north, cooler than normal across parts of the south, and still wetter than normal across the southwest. But where’s the winter? Right now, it’s nowhere to be found.