Weather Channel rolling out video service optimized for mobiles

Want to watch a weather report for Chicago as you wait to board your plane in Atlanta?

The Weather Channel has just made that a whole lot easier. At CTIA this week, The Weather Channel Interactive is showing a new mobile video service newly available through The Weather Channel's mobile Web site.

I'm referring to video forecasts for San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta (Weather Channel's home city), recorded and configured for mobile devices and delivered by the meteorologists you probably already know from TWC's cable channel.

Some 100 U.S. metropolitan areas will be added by the end of this year. With new video forecasts added every 30 minutes, that should equate to around 5,000 original, optimized-for-mobile, weather video clips a day.

This new content is enabled via a deal between TWC and mobile video solutions provider Vantrix. They are a company with under-the-hood technologies which make mobile video optimizable for PDAs and cellphones.

I've already tried this. Couldn't wait. Came at this one with a confluence of bonafides. I mean, not only am I into mobile tech but I got a barometer for a birthday present when I was eight and I still have it. Subscribed to Weather Bureau maps back then as well.

Listen I am a print guy but when it comes to weather, we're talking visual elements here. Text-only weather forecasts furnish the basic info, but give me video of pretty sunrises, slashing rain, all other wonderous stuff our atmosphere can cook up.