(2) is a big ol' bingo. There was a race towards the bottom line of higher spatial and time resolution over the past 5 years (claims along the lines of "higher

(2) is a big ol' bingo. There was a race towards the bottom line of higher spatial and time resolution over the past 5 years (claims along the lines of "higher resolution means higher accuracy!"), which led to an awful lot of products that are nothing more than naive interpolations of coarser data. So couple the perception of "better"/"more accurate" products with a wholly insufficient technical approach to realizing this and you have a perfect storm for end users to feel that weather forecasts are getting worse. They just over-promised and under-delivered because many people who entered the field from outside of it completely underestimated how hard it is to push weather forecasting technology forward. (1) is irrelevant for weather forecasting.