I use on-demand networking via NetworkManager. This often means that the network
connection is only established upon starting an X session by a user. (For the
curious, this is because access to a wireless network can be on the per-user,
and not the per-computer policy)

This setup seems to confuse the gweather applet. If it fails to find the network
at startup, the display shows the 'undefined' state indefinitely, unless
manually refreshed.

It may be the preferred operation mode but FWIW I'd expect that the applet would
be able to work despite this issue. Many programs do, so I guess this request is
reasonable.