Current development in the Forecast Production Assistant (FPA) is moving towards shorter term forecasting of mesoscale phenomena. The FPA at present is primarily used for synoptic scale forecasting, by allowing forecasters to develop a conceptual model of the changing state of the atmosphere represented as a time series of weather parameters in a forecast meteorological database. The forecast database is a combination of grid based fields (from available numerical models) as well as area, line, and point objects that describe meteorological features and parameters derived from processes or observational datasets. Short term mesoscale forecasting requires new techniques to handle smaller time scales and more frequent changes to meteorological parameters. There is also more reliance on observations and short range prediction schemes, and a requirement to describe the evolution of weather features as opposed to the prediction of such features at specific future times. The latest version of the FPA allows a substantial amount of meteorological information to be attached to features in any forecast field. For example, the minimum in a pressure field can be identified as a named tropical storm with a radius of strong winds for use in marine forecasting, or an area in a clouds and weather field can be identified with multiple layers of cloud and associated surface weather for use in aviation forecasting. These types of parameters can also be used to describe changes over time, and modification of such parameters can therefore allow the forecaster to describe changes over shorter time scales. Indeed, these parameters can describe features that develop and dissipate between times in the forecast sequence. Display of high resolution observational datasets such as satellite imagery or radar allows the forecaster to extract relevant information for use in the short term forecasts. The continuing challenge is to develop more intuitive tools for initialization, display and modification of these types of forecast meteorological parameters