HOW TO GET LOCAL WEATHER MAPS FROM THE WEB:

a nice site for this type of information is:

http://grads.iges.org/pix/wxmaps.html

it contains maps for the US with wind direction, windspeed and precip, 
trajectories etc. 

to get them via ftp:

ftp grads.iges.org (192.239.84.50)
login: anonymous
password: martins@ldeo.columbia.edu
cd www/mirror/pix
bin
get east_surf.gif
get east_precip.gif
bye