ac3522
(Sendgrid's lowest advertised rate is $.45/1000)
We are at the high end on pricing, but we constantly hear from customers about how great our deliverability and support is. Also if you purchase in bulk, our pricing becomes very competitive very fast. Since it’s a straight pay for what you use model with no monthly plans required, we think it’s a lot simpler to use.
For current conditions, you could try YQL, but I'm not sure if it's really current. (A good article: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2009/12/extending...)
The NOAA service (http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/xml/rest.php) that I've used before just does time series, so you might be able to get the most recent time, but you're right, I haven't been able to find a NOAA API for current data.