AccuWeather.com Mobile now features a School Closing Outlook, which predicts the probability of school cancellation for users? specific locations based on expected winter-season weather.

Parents of daycare and school-aged children struggle every winter with the challenge of trying to plan for childcare needs based on school cancellations. With this new feature, parents can check conditions on their mobile phones wherever they are and plan for the possibilities of likely snow days.

?AccuWeather.com mobile continues to grow at a tremendous rate in terms of users, over 200 percent in 2009, and we are always looking for new features to add value for our audience,? said Jim Candor, senior vice president of New Media at AccuWeather.com. ?Particularly, we?re interested in the way our users engage with weather to make their own lives easier.

?School Warnings is a perfect example,? he said. ?Winter weather can pose a particular challenge for parents of pre-school and grade school children.

?A snow storm that might mean a delay in getting to work for a single user could equal a whole day of having to stay home to take care of children.?

If there is a high probability of snow for the user?s location, an alert bar will appear just below the main menu of the AccuWeather.com mobile Web site, which when clicked will send users to the School Closing Outlook page.

To make its forecasts, School Closing Outlook takes into account a variety of types of winter weather events that may play a role in the decision whether or not to cancel school, including snow, ice and extreme cold.

It considers not only the actual weather, but also considers its likely impact on road and travel conditions.

School Closing Outlook also takes into account local climatology ? an inch of snow in northern Florida may lead to school cancellation, while it would likely take a much greater snow accumulation to cancel school in the Great Lakes snow belts.

The School Closing Outlook is not intended as a replacement for official school closing and delay notices, which come directly from the school district.

 School children themselves may also want to monitor the index for possible snow days.

?We believe our users come to AccuWeather.com Mobile because they need the most accurate weather information but also because we provide something more than the forecast,? Mr. Candor said. ?With great features like travel weather, flight delays, video forecasts and news we try to give users a picture of the weather and how it impacts their lives.

?You can find many more lifestyle indices ? everything from barbeque to football indices ? on AccuWeather.com on the wired Web and no doubt we?ll be bringing more on mobile in the coming months,? he said.