Operational climate forecasts for 3-month average temperature are issued monthly by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, for lead times from 0.5 to 12.5 months. Among these forecasts, the Probability of Exceedance forecasts present information on expected shifts in the probability distribution of average temperature relative to climatological distributions. The forecasts appear to support a wide range of applications in agriculture, and possibly water resource management. However, the adoption and use of the forecasts has been limited, partly due to a lack of user-oriented measures of forecast utility on a regional basis. As a step in this direction, the frequency and magnitude of forecast departures from climatological conditions will be summarized across all forecast divisions for the years 1997 – 2002. This measure is termed “usefulness” in the sense that forecasts for strong or persistent departures from climatological conditions are more likely to be perceived as useful by managers, while weak or non-forecasts may be ignored. A similar analysis on seasonal precipitation forecasts showed large variations in usefulness with region, ENSO state, and season. The results on the usefulness of both temperature and precipitation forecasts will be part of a forecast utility atlas for the contiguous United States.