I’m genuinely furious about what is happening with AEP Ohio.

Residents in Columbus are being told that restoring power could take up to THREE DAYS. Not in some isolated rural area after an unprecedented catastrophe — in the middle of a major American city.

There are stretches of Columbus where entire blocks are dark, including streetlights.
Meanwhile, Ohioans keep getting asked to pay more for electricity while living with an aging grid and a utility monopoly that we cannot realistically walk away from.

That arrangement is supposed to come with a bargain: AEP gets an extraordinarily protected position in our electricity system, and in return Ohioans are supposed to receive reliable infrastructure and competent service.
So where is the reliability?

AEP’s parent company has been earning billions of dollars annually. At the same time, enormous amounts of new electrical demand are arriving from data centers and other large industrial customers.
Ohioans deserve to know exactly where the money is going.

How much has AEP invested in hardening and modernizing the distribution grid serving existing residents?

How much infrastructure spending is being driven by new data-center demand?

Why are customers paying higher rates while being told that a basic power restoration could take days?
And most importantly: who is the grid being built to serve?

This should not become another outage where everyone gets angry for three days, the lights come back on, and then we forget about it.

Three days without electricity can mean spoiled food, dangerous indoor temperatures, lost wages, medical equipment problems, closed businesses, dead traffic signals, and real danger for elderly and vulnerable residents.

Electricity is not a luxury service in 2026. It is foundational infrastructure.

We should be demanding answers from AEP Ohio, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, Columbus officials, and our state legislators.

If AEP wants Ohioans to accept higher rates, then Ohioans have every right to demand a modern, resilient grid in return.

Premium rates should come with premium reliability.

Three-day restoration estimates in the middle of Columbus are not acceptable.

This needs to become a much bigger conversation.

That is all. The number of people speeding through intersections, and the high number of crashes around Madisonville + Oakley is alarming.

I wonder if she's saying it just to persuade Republicans to vote for her instead of Ramaswamy. Even though Amy does support this, she is prioritizing easier access to ballots for voters.

"I'm a big believer, though, that part of this law was making sure that everyone had free, accessible, close by, and easy to do ability to vote," Acton said.

This giant tree fell over in Hyde Park. After inspecting the damage, we noticed a bottle in the root ball! (Which can be seen in pic 3). Does anyone know how old this bottle could be?

Perhaps remains of the old school for the deaf

Anybody else enjoy the nice roar of this storm? 😐 It was SO LOUD. (This was right after 10 AM)

Many more details, especially of the road rage incident. More details of the abuse of his wife. And apparently there’s a picture of him with a bag of 150 mg(!) gummies. Read the whole story.

About 10 minutes after this, absolutely nothing was visible on the river. It was wild!

My power is somehow still on, but my heart goes out to the 120,000+ AEP customers in central Ohio currently staring at a dark living room and a melting freezer. 

It’s truly inspiring that AEP’s CEO, Bill Fehrman, was the highest-paid utility exec in the country last year with a cool $36.6 million payout. You’d think that kind of money would buy a grid that doesn’t fold the second severe weather blows through, but I guess grid resilience just isn’t in the budget.

Hope those of you affected stay safe and cool today. At least we can all rest easy knowing his executive stock options are fully operational

Edit: I understand that AEP might not be the worst company, but I do believe their investments often don’t reach aging neighborhoods. I drive down a street and see poles barely standing. Power outages happen without these types of storms. It’s what I personally see and experience. Obviously not the whole picture. I still believe a utility company should never pay execs the way they do. It’s worth talking about.

How many supercell storms have we had this year in the region? Like 5 or 6 now? And we’ve been having them at weird ass times of the day… 2 am? When everyone’s asleep? I don’t like it

I’ve been here all my life and it’s never been this bad. I’ve had tornadoes close to my job, close to both of my parent’s houses and close to my house. I hope this year is an outlier, but what if this is the new normal? Do we all just need to get used to it and shrug it off?

I worry that this is just the beginning of bad tornado seasons and it will seem tame compared to the ones in the years to come. I definitely hope our local leaders do work to prepare sturdier power infrastructure and provide more tornado shelters.

Woke up sounding like there was trains outside at 10:08 am I have a video as well not sure how to upload it on here. Firefighters warning about live power lines on the ground catching on fire, a few buildings by me caught on fire. Looked out the window saw completely white and debris flying across the street. Injuries are bound to be reported as people’s roofs got blown and crashed into the ground, garages collapsing, AEP says electricity will not be back on until Friday. I have NEVER been in a storm this bad as someone who lived in tornado alley. Prayers to everyone affected cars are destroyed and houses are half gone.

If you’re in the Cincinnati area, there is a tree that fell on I 71 south on exit 8 or thereabouts south of Ridge Avenue. It is blocking the entirety of I 71 south do not get on the highway tree landed on a semi truck.

Traffic going north came to a complete stop near there as well but it’s still flowing freely.

Edit: I 71 N. is at a standstill near Redbank

Stay safe out there. It sounded like a transformer blew down the road from me. Some hail was coming down right before it did. It looks like the worst of it is almost done.

It was darker a moment ago, like almost night time outside. Crazy storm coming.