Flight ended up leaving at 203pm and arriving about 2.5 hours late. After posting this thread and changing my flight, it stayed at the original departure well past that time, then got bumped several times in a more sequential manner typical with delays.

I believe it was truly a weather related delay but remain frustrated by how illogical the departure updates were. Does anyone know if these updates are fully automated, semi-automated with human approval or manually scheduled by operations? I've experienced this several times in the past, but nothing has actually thwarted travel plans prior to today. Most recent was stepping through security and getting a text that the flight was delayed several hours. As we discussed our options the flight was moved back to the original departure - presumably a mistake since there was no gate/plane change. And many times a delay announced early that gets moved back up with a plane swap, which was not the case today.