I just checked again and I don't believe the problem is invalid and it still exists even in Blender 2.9.
The problem about the UI is not the main problem I want to address.

The main problem is that using keyframes with the wind velocity variable does not change the animation as it plays or when it is rendered.
Ex: If I click on frame 1 and click on the wind velocity box it should have a value of 1m/s. When I hit play, the wave animation itself (not just the number in the UI) does not change from the setting of 1m/s.

It will loop continuously at the wind velocity of 1m/s as if there was no keyframe other keyframe to transition to.

If I go to frame 250 and click on the wind velocity box which should have a value of 30m/s and the hit play again. The entire animation will loop with the wind velocity setting of 30m/s.

Ah OK, in fact I think there are many properties in this modifier that should not be animatable, since they are only used once when initializing the simulation. Will fix that.

So just to clarify. keyframing the wind velocity is not currently possible with the Ocean modifier?

I was trying to animate a time lapse of the waves changing direction and speed over time. I figured out a work around by using many ocean modifiers and fading them in and out, but it seemed like all that would be unnecessary if I could just keyframe more properties within one instance of the ocean modifier.

If not many people are doing stuff like this I suppose it's a non issue, but I just wanted to share my opinion.

Anyway, thank you for taking a look!

Correct, most of the Ocean modifier's parameters are actually not animatable, since they are set only once in the solver at the init step of the simulation.