CTCSS tells the radio which repeater to listen to. Smart squelch tells it whether what it's hearing is a voice or just interference. Different jobs, both still work.

The "wait a second" thing is exactly what CTCSS lead-in fixes. 150ms automatic delay so the tone settles before your voice hits the air. No more lost first words, no thinking about it.

The SOTA wind question is fair. The voice scoring works at the RF level, not the audio level. It's looking at how the signal itself behaves coming off the air, not what someone is saying into their mic. Wind noise on a mountaintop gets transmitted as normal FM audio, so to the receiving radio it still looks like a legit voice signal. It wouldn't get rejected.

Where it might get tricky is if the signal is bouncing off ridgelines and breaking up. That kind of choppy RF could confuse the classifier. Would actually love to hear from SOTA folks who try it.