Well, this particular API was created for a single purpose - to feed data to the NOAA Weather widget, and later, the Local Info widget.  It was not publicly documented, and anyone using it for any other purpose was knowing taking a risk.  It has actually changed several times over the years, as NOAA has changed their service.   The most recent change by NOAA prompted us to deprecate the service and modify the widgets to contact NOAA directly for current conditions and forecast data, while we still operated the weather station mapping, since they don't do that.  Now the data caching happens on the client (in MobileSharedObjects) rather than on the server.  To my knowledge, those widgets are working just fine.

It was not "designed not to work anymore" - it doesn't work only because the purpose for which it was initially created no longer exists.  That's not the only service that we've changed over the years, since virtually no third-party service we interface with has stayed the same.  For instance, the SHOUTcast service had a *major* API change a couple of years ago, but in that case we were able to maintain the same chumby-facing API.  Facebook is a constantly moving target, and they're about to make another policy change that will break many products.

Note that NOAA has been under some political pressure to deprecate all free access to taxpayer-funded data.