The government and government-adjacent institutions classify and quantify these things are competing with each other for relevance, reach, budget, etc. so there

The government and government-adjacent institutions classify and quantify these things are competing with each other for relevance, reach, budget, etc. so there's a huge incentive to scream "tonight at 11: DOOOOOOM". The media (weather included) is competing for eyeball*hours so of course they do stuff like this too. A lot of people are gonna look real stupid in 10-20yr when it becomes clear in hindsight that the solution to societal alarm fatigue was not to just increase the volume. (And I'm gonna head off the inevitable snarky comments by reminding everyone that alarm fatigue caused by alarms rightfully going off is still alarm fatigue.) People have no problem remembering the Hurricane of '38. This naming stuff is all theater. Playing PR games so you can have .05% more "resonates with the public" or whatever dumb KPI you're chasing this quarter isn't gonna slow or mitigate global warming. But it will help you be seen "doing something" which appears to matter a lot to a lot of people.