The National Weather Service is currently implementing an Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS) that assists forecasters in creating forecast products. With IFPS, forecasters work with a suite of gridded weather elements to produce a digital forecast database.

   This paper describes a set of techniques used to create representative areal forecasts from a digital forecast database. These techniques summarize large amounts of data, extracted from gridded weather elements, into another, more condensed form that product generators can use to create official NWS products.