I have not yet seen any kind of popup on the weather channel. When I was looking at CNN Interactive the other day, I was thinking "this is how the weather channel should work" but of course it doesn't.
Come on, its a step in the right direction. I wouldn't want more graphics and more features that would just cause it to load even slower. I like that when they're talking about something boring, I can read an article about something more interesting to me. Or read the articles when they go to a commercial.