A modern, browser-based recreation of The Weather Channel's early-90s WeatherStar 4000 local forecast — the blue-and-orange graphics, the smooth-jazz music, the endless scroll of your regional weather — driven by the live NOAA/NWS API.

This is an enhanced fork of netbymatt/ws4kp (original live here) that adds an Air Quality display, a reworked Regional Forecast, server-first container deployment, and bundled music — see What's added in this fork.

It chases the feel of the 90s — a low-fuss app that looks and sounds like The Weather Channel did then, on today's data. It is not a hardware-accurate emulator — for that, see the WS4000 Simulator. Some screens differ from the original because more (or less) forecast data is available now than in the 90s.

Because the data comes from NOAA, WeatherStar 4000+ works for US locations only. For international weather, see the ws4kp-international fork by @mwood77.

A rotating set of forecast "displays," most toggle-able on the page:

• Current Conditions and Latest Observations
• Local Forecast and Extended Forecast (several days)
• Hourly Graph (temperature, clouds, precip for the next 36 h) and an Hourly Forecast
• Regional Forecast map — user-centered, denser city selection (reworked in this fork)
• Air Quality (new in this fork; key-free Open-Meteo data)
• Travel Cities, Almanac, Radar, Hazards, and the SPC Severe-Weather Outlook
• Retro background music, scan-line CRT effect, kiosk mode, and shareable permalinks

All weather data comes from free, public services (the server proxies and caches them; in static mode the browser calls them directly):

Requires Node.js (v24+ recommended).

git clone https://github.com/jacaudi/ws4kp.git
cd ws4kp
npm install
npm start

Then open http://localhost:8080/ and search for a US location.

WeatherStar 4000+ runs as a server deployment by default: a small Node/Express server with a caching proxy in front of the weather APIs — it de-duplicates and caches requests, so many viewers make few upstream calls.

Run modes — all serve at http://localhost:8080/:

With Docker — the default image is the server build:

docker build -t ws4kp .
docker run -p 8080:8080 ws4kp

Or pull a prebuilt multi-arch image (amd64 + arm64) — :latest from main, :vX.Y.Z for releases, :sha-<short> for any build:

docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/jacaudi/ws4kp:latest

With Docker Compose:

services:
  ws4kp:
    build: .            # or image: ghcr.io/jacaudi/ws4kp:latest
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Any permalink parameter can seed a default via WSQS_ (see docs/deployment.md)
      - WSQS_latLonQuery=Orlando International Airport Orlando FL USA

Seed a default location and display set with WSQS_ environment variables (handy for kiosks/dashboards): take any permalink parameter, replace - with _, and prefix WSQS_ — e.g. -e WSQS_latLonQuery="Orlando International Airport" and -e WSQS_kiosk=true. Values can also come from a .env file. Full reference — plus dev/prod modes and the archived static image — is in docs/deployment.md.

• Access: open http://localhost:8080/, search a location, and pick the displays you want with the checkboxes.
• Permalinks: click Copy Permalink to capture your exact configuration and location as a shareable/bookmarkable URL. You can also hand-build one — omitted settings fall back to defaults:

  http://localhost:8080/?latLonQuery=Orlando+International+Airport&units-select=metric&kiosk=true
  

• Kiosk mode: a full-screen, controls-hidden view for dashboards/signage — toggle on the page or append &kiosk=true. Exit with Ctrl-K or reload.

Settings at a glance:

Full details on permalinks, kiosk/PWA install, every setting, and custom scrolling text are in docs/usage.md.

The build ships with a set of copyright-free, WeatherStar-inspired tracks (stored via Git LFS and baked into the container image), so music plays out of the box. Drop your own .mp3 files in ./server/music/ — or bind-mount a folder over /app/server/music in Docker — to override them.

Adding/replacing music, the autoplay rules browsers enforce, and static-mode scanning are covered in docs/music.md.

Beyond the upstream project, this fork adds:

• Air Quality display — key-free Open-Meteo AQI, works in both server and static modes.
• User-centered Regional Forecast — nearest-N ranked city selection with a junk filter and label-collision handling, plus AK/HI projection fixes.
• Server-first deployment — the caching server image is the default; the static nginx build is archived under .archive/static/.
• Bundled music via Git LFS, and automated releases (release-please → SemVer tags, changelog, and vX.Y.Z container images).

In-depth guides live in docs/:

• Matt (netbymatt) — the maintainer of ws4kp, which this project is forked from. Nearly all of WeatherStar 4000+ — the displays, the data plumbing, the look and feel — is his work and is kept largely intact here; this fork only adds a few displays and a container/release setup. Thank you for building it and keeping it open!
• Mike Battaglia (vbguyny) — the creator of the original WeatherStar 4000 web project (which Matt forked in 2020) and the code that draws the weather displays and the background maps. Thank you for the foundation the whole project rests on!
• The team at TWCClassics — for the WeatherStar 4000 fonts and icon sets and for meticulously documenting the original hardware. Icons by Charles Abel, Nick Smith, and Malek Masoud; fonts originally by Nick Smith. Thank you for preserving the look of the era!
• The ws4kp community — for the contributions, forks, and write-ups linked in docs/faq.md. Thank you for keeping retro forecasts alive!

This site should NOT be used in life-threatening weather situations, or be relied on to inform the public of such situations. The Internet is an unreliable network subject to outages and is not suitable for mission-critical use. If you require reliable access to NWS data, please consider one of their subscription services. The authors shall not be held liable for injury, death, or property damage resulting from disregarding this warning.

The WeatherSTAR 4000 unit and technology is owned by The Weather Channel. This is a free, non-profit work by fans; all background graphics were created from scratch.