Since the launch of the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS-5) in March 1995, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) has routinely received 3-hourly water vapor imagery coverage over the western North and South Pacific. Identifiable patterns in this imagery are used operationally to help determine tropical cyclone movement, genesis, and intensification. Since December 1995, water vapor-derived upper level (150-600mb) wind vectors, and more recently upper level divergence fields and vertical shear charts, provided by the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), have been used to identify specific synoptic-scale features that appear to influence all three of these basic characteristics. In addition to identifying the degree of vertical wind shear over a particular system—necessary to understand genesis potential, influences with upper level ridges, troughs, Tropical Upper-Tropospheric Trough (TUTT) cells and cut-off lows have been identified to indicate both different intensification rates as well as movement. The upper level water vapor-derived winds and calculated fields have helped identify and in some cases, quantify, many of these patterns. Results from the past several seasons will be presented.