ATLANTA - They delight in watching the kinks in the jet stream. They follow wind-chill readings the way baseball fans keep track of batting averages. They know what ``dewpoint'' means. <br>
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The Weather Channel has made weather junkies out of some TV viewers. <br>
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This month, the weather junkies' 24-hour cable TV fix celebrates 20 years on the air. <br>
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Since its first broadcast on May second, 1982 - when a forecaster welcomed viewers to ``the non-ending weather telethon'' - The Weather Channel has spread to 85 million U.S. homes and earned a place in American pop culture. <br>
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Its Web site, among the 20 most popular in America, gets more than $350 million hits a month. From the channel's headquarters outside Atlanta, it beams forecasts to cell phones, pagers and handheld computers. <br>
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All of which makes obsessive fans of The Weather Channel - people who just aren't satisfied with three minutes on the 6 o'clock news - very happy.
