Cartographic Animations - Hurricane Ivan radar loop

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1270&tstamp=&page=18

Cartographic animations are a very important way of displaying results and falls under the realm of geovisualization.  Having a time series of information can inform the viewer of things that aren't necessarily apparent when looking from image to image without the assistance of an animation.  Trends become more apparent as we see images before and after a single frame.  This can even allow us to make predictions and forecasts based off of previous behavior.

The image above is a composite radar loop of Hurricane Ivan as it came onshore in 2004.  This radar loop unveils the structure of the hurricane including the outer bands, inner bands, and eyewall of this Storm.  Because we can see the general movement of the storm, we can make estimations on when certain parts of the storm will arrive within a certain area.