This study presents results from an experiment conducted to measure the impact of locally initializing an atmospheric computer model on its ability to predict precipitation. The study had two phases. The first phase of the study consisted on enhancing the Advance Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) LAPS diagnostic analyses by using local mesonets and then using these to locally initialize a mesoscale model. The model used for the study is the Workstation Eta (WsEta). The first phase of the study ran from August 4, 2003 to October 11, 2003. In addition to measuring the impact of using LAPS to initialize the workstation Eta, the impact of different physical configurations on the model’s performance was studied as well. The second phase of the study consisted of incorporating high resolution SST analyses into the initialization cycle to study their impact on the model’s performance. The experiment for this second phase ran from July 15, 2004 to August 15, 2004. Results in general show that LAPS had little impact overall on the WsEta’s ability to forecast precipitation except within the first 12 hours of the forecast by the early morning runs (06Z) during a light wind regime. Results from the second phase of the experiment will also be presented with this presentation and in the extended abstract.