This paper describes the diverse and constantly changing needs for viewing and analyzing forecast guidance and how to operationally produce the data to meet these needs. The “Wow” factor bar is continually being raised with technological improvements in data throughput, portability and visualization techniques. The production of weather model guidance is an automated process; therefore the users expect that the updated graphics, and other products, should be immediately available at the completion of each model run.

We will discuss the current operational visualization methods, and potential future methods, for the display and manipulation of model output data, primarily over the World Wide Web. The difficulties in automating and operationalizing large weather and ocean model datasets will be explored. This discussion includes possible solutions from static graphical displays that can be easily manipulated through a web interface to GIS technologies for adding Geo referenced metadata, allowing the user to interact with the data and combine it in new and interesting ways.