How come all Thunderstorms...

Why are all Thunderstorms considered severe now? There is never a "regular" thunderstorm. We just had one here, a couple booms of thunder and no lighting that I could see. It came on TV as a severe thunderstorm capable of producing 80mph winds and small hail.

Two reasons:

It's called a 'teaser'. The newsreader will say "Stay tuned for dramatic video of the severe thunderstorm' when it was only a couple of puffy clouds with a rumble in them. They don't want you to change channels during the commercial.

The other reason is liability. TV weathercasters predict the worst case scenario for CYA. We see it here with winter storm forecasts. The TV will say 'Up to 4 feet of snow in the higher elevations' and in town we will see two inches on the ground. 10,000 feet on the north slope probably did get 4 feet of snow, but not here.

They changed it here in Missouri and I think they changed it in Kansas, if not they are trying to. Now Severe thunderstorm means quarter size hail or basicly huricane force winds. Now we pay attention when they say severe weather warning. i think the last one we had was pretty bad. I remember we had 90 mph winds that lasted almost 5 minutes. The lightning was so intence you didnt dare go near windows or tvs. Now that they have changed it here, I suppose they will work on changing it everywhere else.