Trust me.. there are few people who know the water vapor as well as I do. You can't see the top of the ocean.. or far down as you said surface activity but when you have spent a lot of time with it..like I have there are subtleties that you can read which cannot be seen on the other two mediums.

You can also tell when something is as I call "anchored" into the general atmospheric environment.

It's not perfect but in a case like today if you know what you are looking at...you can see more whats going on with the storm and around the storm and even into the storm than the visible lets you see. And..the IR can sometimes be misleading or.. old news.

I know what you mean.. trust me, but takes a lot of experience and a lot of hours to really appreciate the worth of the water vapor. And, may I say things show up quite fast..faster than people realize. It's not just a forecasting tool for the future.. shows you many things.

Sometimes..it is like an xray if you will of the backbone of the system as... they are all a matter of moisture being transfered when you come down to it.