Weather service AccuWeather.com has launched a new location-aware, ad-supported application for the Apple iPhone.

In addition to including an array of weather forecast information, the free application offers weather alarms and health indices. The application will be supported by mobile banner and video advertising.

"Weather is one of the most popular forms of mobile content, so our goal is to continue to serve and extend our audience with the best weather available anywhere," said David Mitchell, director of wireless services for AccuWeather.com.

"Our approach is to make a customized and optimized user experience for every major user population, through mobile Web, mobile widgets and mobile applications," he said. "Any place users are looking for mobile content, we want to be in front of them."

The new AccuWeather.com application for iPhone offers a wide range of weather information benefits including animated, user-centric radar and satellite, and five-day local forecasts with high and low temperatures and sky conditions for day and night.

The new application also has hour-by-hour forecasts and weather videos including national, regional and local forecasts as well as breaking weather news, lifestyle weather and several other entertaining and informative choices.

Why the need for an iPhone app?

"Because it's the iPhone," Mr. Mitchell said.

"And the iPhone has been a great driver of mobile Web, so it's an important audience and one that we value very much," he said.

"Also, many iPhone users are new to the mobile Web and we want to help them find the best possible weather experiences."

This application also has health weather indices including the UV, air quality, Arthritis Index and Flu Index. It has WeatherRisc graphs, which show probability of severe weather conditions over the next eight hours.

The proprietary AccuWeather.com Weather Alarms issue notifications to users based on certain bad weather parameters that are independent of government-issued alerts.

The Weather Alarms warn users of impending rain, snow, ice, wind, wind gusts and thunderstorm.

"We have recently added flight delays to our mobile Web site," Mr. Mitchell said. "We will be adding ad-supported video in the very near future. We have launched and are about to launch a number of mobile widgets and applications.

"For example, we provide the weather content to power the weather widget on the LG INCITE," he said. "We are on the Android T-Mobile G1 and Opera Mobile."

The AccuWeather.com application also relays government-issued weather alerts when applicable for the user's area.

The new app is being promoted via advertising on the AccuWeather site and device-targeted ads on the company's mobile site.

AccuWeather is also working with the iPhone user community to spread the word on its new application.

"What's next is ad-supported video with pre-rolls, companion ads and overlays," Mr. Mitchell said. "Practically our whole catalog of video will be available the mobile Web.

"You will see us continuing to expand our audience and serve new groups of users with more mobile widgets in 2009," he said.