NBC is preparing to launch a 24/7 digital weather channel that will air here on Time Warner Cable.

The channel, NBC4 Weather Plus, will air on Time Warner Cable/Ch. 731 and could grow to become a nationwide franchise, with reports provided by local NBC stations, according to Multichannel News.

NBC officials wouldn’t confirm anything yesterday, but viewers who tuned into Ch. 731 were greeted with a message telling them the channel will become available Monday, Nov. 15.

Content for NBC4 Weather Plus will be supplied by NBC-owned Ch. 4, according to the Multichannel News report.

The local all-weather channel isn’t a novel concept. But other such channels – like Metro Weather, which airs on Cablevision and other local cable systems and provides weather updates for the area – don’t have the backing of a multi-resource network like NBC.

The Weather Channel airs nationally on cable, but only devotes a small segment of airtime to local markets.

But people love weather – and ratings for The Weather Channel jumped significantly when Florida was hit by a succession of hurricanes earlier this fall.