Sandy Blasts Record Digital Traffic

The Weather Channel had nearly half a billion page views on Oct. 29

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/30/2012 1:30:16 PM

Users who still had power and internet connectivity were producing record online and mobile traffic at some sites on Monday, with The Weather Channel (TWC) reporting 450 million pages views on its various mobile and online offerings and 298 million page views on weather.com.

Both those numbers were records. The overall numbers nearly doubled the previous record of 249 million from Feb. 1, 2011 and were much higher than the 183 million seen on Aug. 27, 2011 from Hurricane Irene. At 1 p.m. ET, the company also told B&C that traffic levels are pacing towards another record for Oct. 30.

The 298 million page views on weather.com also more than doubled its previous record of 141 million from February 2, 2011 and nearly tripped Irene's highest day of 107 million page views on August 26, 2011.

There were also more than 9.6 million total live video streams during the course of the storm on weather.com and YouTube, with a peak of 167,000 concurrent users.

TWC's mobile and table apps also set record levels on Monday October 29^th with 125 million page views. Mobile apps had 110 million page views, a record. Tablet apps however had 14.9 million page views, the second highest after the record 15 million page views seen on Sunday.

Tabulations for video viewing on TWC mobile and tablet apps weren't completed yet but are expected to beat Sunday's record of 1.6 million video starts.