In the last few years, the Graphical Forecast Editor (called the GFESuite) has become the primary tool that operational forecasters at the National Weather Service (NWS) offices use to create and edit their gridded forecast fields. The GFESuite provides a wide range of tools and capabilities for this purpose, but it has been left up to the NWS regions, individual forecast offices, and ultimately individual forecasters to decide what approach to take to generate and maintain these forecast fields. Along with maintaining an internally consistent gridded forecast database, forecasters must also consider the gridded forecasts generated by surrounding offices in order to maintain a level of spatial and temporal consistency over the large national domain.

In this study, GFE logs are examined to determine which tools and capabilities are being used by the NWS forecasters. The GFE logs record status information, which tools and capabilities are used, and a time stamp indicating exactly when tools are used or when specific actions are performed. Week-long log "snapshots" are being collected from a variety of forecast offices and during a variety of weather conditions. These snapshots are examined in order to see the range and frequency of use from a number of forecasters with a variety of forecast responsibilities. A summary of these results will be presented. Any common patterns of use that arise will be discussed, based on these snapshots, as well as how GFE use may change in this rapidly-evolving forecast process.