The last two times there was a big issue the same thing happened with the status dashboard (it became inaccessible). I remember the same issue when the certs expired 1,5 years ago. I really like Microsoft and was convinced "you" would somehow isolate the dashboard and host it separately, but it turns out I was wrong. Do you happen to know the reasons for hosting the status dashboard inside of Azure? It seems so counter-intuitive to me. Or is it actually hosted externally but died due to the load when the issue started to appear?
The OP mentions that Microsoft representatives gave info via public forums. When the issue appeared I looked in different places trying to find info, but only I found was a statement saying that We are aware of issues. I looked at Azure twitter/blog, ScottGu twitter/blog, Hanselmans, MSDN forums. I also tried this forum and reddit. Do you know where I should have gone to receive details?