5 Things On My Mind: Tornado warnings, Blues zig-zag special, emptier Busch, and enduring 'Mission' films

A cold Sunday deserves coffee, contemplation, and some written words.

In case you forgot, the toughest thing on this planet is Mother Nature. She determines if a house or tree gets its final supper suddenly on a solemn and unusually warm Friday evening. She can decide if someone’s roof needs remodeling. She’ll unleash deadly 60-70 mph winds that can flip a truck or RV over on its side, and possibly send a tree through someone’s bedroom wall.

The only way you can defeat her is with luck standing on your side. Mother Nature steps down in an instant and leaves just as quickly, overturning someone’s life or world in the time it takes to rinse and wash a dish. On Friday evening, a good portion of the country was rocked by a handful of tornadoes. The one that got closest to the Buffa Estate in Princeton Heights originated in Arnold, but there were others that came in from the north by Ferguson and Florissant.

Imagine the situation and it’s quaint yet terrifying. A family could be deciding dinner plans or a spring trip, and then Mother Nature wipes the table clean and resets the worry meters to chaotic levels. My wife was staring at the radar on her phone like it was Narnia as our power flickered and the Wi-Fi danced between “game on” and “game off.” My son, Vinny, and I creeped up the staircase to see the bristling winds and hail pouring onto our street like a marching band who didn’t ask for an invitation.

Tornadoes leave you as helpless as cancer or other deadly diseases. You have tools to fight them, but the defenses are minimal and superficial. As the great Ron White said about extremely fit people telling others that their superior build will aid them in a bad storm: “It doesn’t matter how many pushups you can do when there’s a stop sign hanging out of your ass.”

The storm came and went, leaving only minimal debris on the streets and little hail damage. Others in Missouri and surrounding states weren’t so lucky. At least eleven people were killed. The shocking number could have been larger if it weren’t for meteorologists setting the table for what to expect and never leaving the newsroom. Thankfully, the KSDK newsroom is located in the basement of their building, but shit can still happen when you’re busy warning families about how to survive.

For all the shit they get for not getting the inches right in a snowstorm, they save lives every time Mother Nature decides to pay a bigger visit. Raising my semi-hot cup of coffee to them as I discuss four other things on my mind.