If it helps, I can actually provide several data points from companies I've worked for. I've managed 3 (4?) large Jenkins installations and after the initial exploration almost all developers I've worked with understood what the weather icons meant and liked them. Managers definitely liked them :)

Could the current general lack of appreciation for them be related to where they are located in the Jenkins UI?

In Jenkins 1.x and 2.x they are visible on the top level dashboard alongside the green/blue orbs and I often wonder if that's a source of distraction because I (as a user) am looking at both of these indicators now and wondering how to interpret the state based on both of them, when maybe I shouldn't.

Would it help if the top level dashboard(s) contained only one general build status indicator (vs two), and then the trend/health indicators were "down" on the pipeline details page alongside other health/metrics info (static analysis info)?