Regarding WAO and modularity.. I considered modularity for awhile, but ran into a wall. With so many mods involved, the possibilities very quickly become daunting, when making everything optional. To give you a better idea of just what I'm talking about when I say 'daunting'...

Let's take a look at the wall. Let's call Climates of Tamriel + WeatherPatch v0. WAO would make up the patches that add to that. That means +ESS is v1, +SS is v2, +PW is v3, +Lightning is v4, +ESS+SS is v5, +SS+PW is v6, +ESS+PW is v7, +ESS+SS+PW is v8, +ESS+SS+Lightning is v9, +SS+PW+Lightning is v10, +ESS+PW+Lightning is v11, +ESS+SS+PW+Lightning is v12.

At this point, we're already looking at 12 different patches to update every time we want to change something; but we haven't worked in any sound overhauls yet (3 optional sound mods creates an additional seven variants; +COT-S, +AOS, +SOS, +COT-S+AOS, +COT-S+SOS, +AOS+SOS, +COT-S+AOS+SOS) that increase those numbers immensely; even just making WAO's required mods modular in such a fashion would involve updating 96 (12+12*7) individual patches.

To further complicate things, many lighting mods edit the same cells or regions that weather and sound mods do. WAO provides compatibility versions for nine different lighting mods (or combinations thereof).

What does that due to our numbers? 96+768. Yep.. To maintain the compatibility I'd want, and the modularity others would want, I'd literally be looking at maintaining and supporting as many as 864 patches. This is the wall.

As you can see, it really just isn't feasible. I definitely promote everyone's right to have the weather mods they use work together, but.. This patch is for a specific group of people who use these mods or are willing to. With this said, I highly encourage anyone to use TES5Edit and create a patch for yourself; it's a bit tedious, but it's doable with even rudimentary understanding of the program.