John Margraf NOAA National Weather Service Office, Sterling, Virginia

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) has worked over the past several years at developing the capability to produce forecast information in a digital format, in order to take advantage of technological advances and to improve distribution of high resolution data to our partners and customers. This has resulted in a tremendous paradigm shift for forecasters at the local field offices, who have had to change their routine of developing text based forecasts to one of producing gridded weather information in a digital database from which all forecast products can be extracted.

This presentation will focus on the steps taken locally at the NWS Office in Sterling, Virginia, in order to meet the goals of the NWS transition toward producing the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD), using the Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS). Descriptions of the forecaster training materials, with regards to software familiarization and with forecast methodology in the NDFD era, will be discussed. Outreach activities, where NDFD capabilities were demonstrated to local users, will be described. Specific details regarding the incorporation of experimental and local datasets into IFPS operations, and the use of those datasets to improve the quality of forecasts in higher terrain and along coastal areas, will be presented.