There are a lot of important careers working for the power company, including line workers, meter revenue operations, dispatchers and meteorologists. I&M’s parent company, American Electric Power (AEP), has a meteorology team focused on keeping crews informed well ahead of severe weather.

“There’s never a boring day,” said Meghan Klee, AEP’s Meteorology manager. “We forecast impactful weather for 11 different states -- from South Texas to Michigan and over to Virginia. There is usually interesting weather happening somewhere in AEP’s territory.”

Klee attended Purdue University to study Atmospheric Sciences and Communication and later joined the AEP team as a meteorologist in 2014. Her passion for weather started as a little girl when she would watch storms roll in with her father in her hometown of Fort Wayne.

“I remember a storm during middle school where there were tornado warnings one day, and the very next day it snowed. I remember thinking to myself ‘why’ and that really cemented my future goals,” Klee said. “A few years ago, I found out my great-grandma used to record the daily high and low temperature in a journal. You could say the interest in weather runs in my family.”

At AEP, Klee manages a team of three meteorologists who monitor and prepare forecasts across all of AEP’s seven operating companies -- including I&M. Their coverage area spans 11 states and across more than 200,000 square miles of power lines serving 5.6 million AEP customers. Their short and long-term weather reports help I&M employees prepare and allocate resources to be ready to restore power outages if they occur.

“Our weather forecasts are solely focused on the types of weather that cause a lot of power outages. For example, lines of severe thunderstorms with widespread damaging winds; ice storms; heavy wet snow; and very windy days (windstorms) could all impact trees and various electrical equipment,” Klee said. “There are types of severe weather and winter weather that don’t have a lot of impact to trees and powerlines such as hail, sleet and dry fluffy snow.”

Klee and her team also focus on extreme hot or cold temperatures and communicate the long-range forecast – 11-15 day and seasonal outlooks – to many business units across AEP. Extreme temperatures can lead to high energy use since air conditioners and furnaces need to run more to keep houses and businesses comfortable.

“I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, and I’m very familiar with the I&M service territory and the ever-changing weather patterns there,” Klee said. “We can’t stop the bad weather from happening and causing power outages. But, when it occurs, my team and I do our absolute best to make sure I&M employees have the best information to be able to respond and lead to shorter power interruptions for customers.”

Klee has been a meteorologist for almost 10 years with AEP. Before joining the team, she worked for an airline analyzing how weather patterns could impact flights. She wasn’t surprised AEP had a staff full of meteorologists – but her family was.

“Many do not make the connection that large storms can, of course, cause power outages. I applied for the position at AEP to broaden my knowledge of forecasting as well as apply my forecasting skills in a different way,” Klee said. “I was intrigued with the challenge of forecasting for one of the largest utilities in the country. I’m also a Midwesterner at heart and moving to Columbus, Ohio would bring me much closer to family in Indiana.”

Rest assured when severe weather is on the radar, Klee and her team will be working to provide critical information to help crews work to keep your power flowing or work to restore your service.

If you are interested in joining the I&M and AEP team, click here to learn more about the wide-variety of careers we offer.