A spinoff of The Weather Channel (TWC), the automated service—which based its format on the local forecast segments that have been a mainstay of its parent network since TWC launched in May 1982—provided viewers with a continuous loop of current observations, and routine and specialized forecasts for their respective area in a graphical format; the segments were generated by a customized WeatherStar unit installed at the cable provider's headend (originally running on the WeatherStar XL, before upgrading to the first-generation IntelliStar starting in 2003).

[5] In March 1998, Landmark Communications announced plans to launch a spinoff of The Weather Channel that would provide customized weather forecasts to digital cable subscribers; Landmark signed an agreement with Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) to distribute the service on the provider's Headend in the Sky (HITS) digital cable multiplex service starting that summer.

[24] At its height, Weatherscan was available in many major U.S. markets (reaching an estimated 22 million cable subscribers by February 2005[25][26]), though its national distribution was never as widespread as that of parent network The Weather Channel.

Verizon representatives cited the main driver of letting the agreement lapse being that many of its customers received weather information on the internet and mobile apps;[27][28] FiOS replaced Weatherscan with WeatherBug's set-top "widget" in some of its markets.

Comcast began removing Weatherscan from its cable systems (by then known under the Xfinity brand) in October 2017, with its remaining markets having dropped the network by December 10 of that year.

The actual value was not disclosed, but was reported to be around $300 million; the channel's non-television assets, which were separately sold to IBM two years prior, were not included in the sale.

[2] Additionally, because technical constraints with the early-2000s-era IntelliStar technology in use made upgrades to the format infeasible, Weatherscan was never presented in high definition, unlike most American television news and weather services operating by the time of the network's shutdown.

[5] The company cited declining viewership, the wide availability of local weather information online and on mobile apps, and the aging first-generation IntelliStar equipment as the main reasons for its decision to discontinue the service,[31] which were also cited as what ultimately led to larger pay television providers deciding to drop the channel, limiting carriage of Weatherscan to small to mid-size cable affiliates from December 2017 onward.

As with The Weather Channel's domestic STAR fleet, Weatherscan's XL and IntelliStar units were able to display a crawl (at the bottom third of the screen, which occupied the space filled by the provider ID spot from 2000 to 2003, and the regional weather and advertising crawls from 2005 onward) detailing watches, warnings and advisories issued by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) for the local area where the unit's headend is based.

Local advertising on Weatherscan was primarily limited to the text-based Local Ad Sales (LAS) crawls that have been a mainstay of The Weather Channel's forecast segments since its inception as well as sponsorship tags; however, affiliates had the option of running one-minute-long conventional video ad breaks every ten minutes starting at ten minutes past the hour.

On September 27, 2005 (as early as September 22 for areas of the Southeastern U.S. in the path of Hurricane Rita), the Upper and Lower Display Lines were replaced by a multi-panel "L-bar" datascreen (containing a persistent network ID and the current date and time on the upper left, current observations on the middle left, and a compact radar loop screen and the provider's logo or sponsorship tags on the bottom left of the vertical sidebar; and a panel showing the descriptive 48-hour and graphical daypart and five-day forecasts, and separate crawls for local ads, and observations and forecasts for major regional cities and airports on the bottom right two-thirds), confining the main panel (with slight modifications to the 2003 faux-letterbox graphics set, and accompanied by a permanent segment rundown bar) to a smaller but prominent window at the upper middle of the screen.

[36] For the duration of the All Radar playlist, other routine forecast products were limited to the rudimentary Upper Display LIne summary (2003–2005) or the L-bar datascreen (2005–2022); during the datascreen's existence, an expansion of the current observation data (with other pertinent data below the sky icon and temperature appearing in a two-page format, instead of cycling between variables) replaced the radar loop at the bottom right for the duration of the severe playlist.