The Weather Channel Embraces LatAM.

The Weather Channel and its Web site, weather.com announce plans to launch refreshed Spanish and Portuguese language sites.

The sites rolled out with the launch of http://www.canaldotempo.com, which specifically targets Portuguese speaking users. www.weather.com/Español, which targets Spanish speaking users throughout Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic population, will launch later this year. Along with the additions of these new sites, The Weather Channel Latin America cable network will celebrate its fifth anniversary November 1 of this year.

Visitors to these sites will be able to access weather information for 7,000 cities worldwide by simply entering a city or country name. For each geographic location, the Latin American Web sites will provide current conditions–including temperature, humidity, sun index and more; a 10-day forecast; monthly climate statistics and hour-by-hour details.

The sites will also deliver lifestyle information for popular activities including travel, soccer (futbol), tennis, Formula 1 and mountain and ski. Each section provides users with a list of cities relevant to that activity or lifestyle, a selection of maps and a detailed explanation of how to use the maps to plan for the specific activity.

Additionally, weather.com has created a set of high-quality maps for Brazil and world regions which will appear on both sites. Visitors to www.canaldotempo.com and www.weather.com/espanol will find regional video forecasts, a weather encyclopedia, and they will have the ability to display weather information from The Weather Channel directly on their personal or business Web sites through Weather on Your Site–an online affiliate program.

“The Weather Channel is dedicated to bringing reliable weather information to consumers around the world so they can better plan their lives,” said Eddy Ruiz, president of international business development for The Weather Channel. “The Weather Channel already has a relationship with consumers in Latin America through The Weather Channel Latin America cable networks (TWCLA) and on our existing Spanish and Portuguese Web sites. We believe that this expansion effort is timely and will help us better serve Latin American users by delivering extremely localized weather forecasts and information.”