It seems to me two thing are fair to say:

1. Huygens model describes the behavior of a plane wave, essentially of a single frequency since the diffraction and reflection effects will vary with the relative magnitudes of wavelength and obstruction. While useful as far as it goes, it's hardly "complete" in the real-world sense. Idealized plane waves are hard to come by.

2. You can't argue with the empirical result. You don't need a model for wave propagation to explain a meter reading (though it certainly helps to improve the meter reading).