Mother Nature’s nature: Weather has the real power on this planet

A meteorologist will explain to you that a bomb cyclone is something about the confluence of high-pressure air and low-pressure air and the rate of dropping barometric pressure in the latter as the air mass flows in. As pressure declines in the low (by at least 24 millibars during 24 hours), winds whip faster and faster and bad things happen with the weather and the lives of humans are disrupted.

Wind chill factors climb and records fall as temperatures plunge, flights are canceled and electrical lines are knocked down. And for all the ingenuity and cleverness of people, for all our machines and inventions, we are nothing — tiny, puny beings — compared to the power of the mindless elements of the Earth.

Travel, on foot or in vehicles, becomes dangerous. Survival, not usually a consideration in this country of plenty, becomes real for those caught in the cold. Keeping warm, inside or outside, is the priority. We wait out the winds and the cold, hoping to resume our routines.

But not for one man on a mission, who despite all the frigid, howling storms, will still make it through the night on a flying sleigh.