While it is undeniably both beautiful and really cool, I've yet to see anything that beats a meteogram[1] when it comes to actually understanding at a glance what the weather is likely to do over the next couple of days.
If anyone is interested, IEM has a site that is rather easy to use once you find your local station ID and know how to plug it in: http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/~ckarsten/bufkit/image_loader....