FORT MITCHELL, Ky. — Beating the extreme heat is difficult enough with the comfort of air conditioning to escape to. It was horrible timing for many Kentuckians Tuesday who didn’t have that luxury, as they were still without power following Monday’s storms.

One northern Kentucky man talked about trying to stay cool and stay patient.

For the last 30 years, Tom Thoss has spent more hot days out on the front porch of his Fort Mitchell house than he would’ve liked to.

“It happens all the time here, because it’s an old neighborhood with a lot of very large oak trees,” Thoss said of the latest power outage. “We get any wind, the branches come down.”

The good thing is he and his wife were prepared for days like Tuesday. 

A downright oppressive heat index that made its way into the triple digits would’ve been more manageable had he been able to turn on his AC. But Thoss and over 80 of his neighbors near Thompson Avenue remained powerless well into the afternoon on Tuesday, after first losing power around 6:00 p.m. Monday following heavy storms.

They remained powerless at 5:30 pm, according to Duke Energy’s outage map. A few hours after the storms, some of Thoss’ neighbors’ power came back on.

“We just assumed that there were Duke people in the neighborhood fixing the problem. So we assumed, anytime, ours would come back on,” he said.

He tried calling Tuesday morning. “They told us they had crews in the area. They didn’t,” Thoss said.

With thousands of outages to address in northern Kentucky alone on Tuesday, crews certainly had their work cut out for them.

So Thoss had to wait, equipped with some cold ice tea and his trusty deck to get him through.

“We get a nice breeze through here, so it’s comfortable,” he said. “We grew up without air conditioning. It’s part of summer. It’s part of this situation with this neighborhood, and you just deal with it.”

The bigger concerns, he said, were preserving the increasingly expensive food he and his wife had stocked up on. And also, his neighbors, some of whom may not have been as well adept at dealing with the heat, such as “the people with very, very young babies,” Thoss said. “Then you have the seniors that don’t have anybody to look after them. You have to make sure they’re okay.”

It’s a tight-knit neighborhood, Thoss said. They take care of each other, even while waiting to be taken care of themselves.

Duke Energy announced all power will be restored in the Tri-State by 11:59 pm Wednesday. The company reported over 166,000 outages in the region resulting from storms.

In a statement, Duke Energy said: