We need to talk about things, make lists of things. Adjectives were a useful device for describing those things, back when our word-hoard of the most extreme of those parts of speech were not loosed within 30 seconds of talking about anything.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, end of days, zombie apocalypse -to name a few, but not to exclude wrecks, collisions, collapses, (multiple) shootings all now instantly provoke a list of all extant adjectives that can possibly pertain to (X).
Exciting, terrifying, horrifying, devastating, amazing......as with most types of words, English provides an abundant, but not unlimited, array of synonyms. Now they are immediately gone, employed as a compulsory litany whenever a qualifying event occurs. And the bar is set very, very low.
Thus, an F1 tornado that disassembles a trailer in an Oklahoma mobile home park is placed at the same level as a Chilean earthquake that kills 800 and moves a city ten feet, or an Indonesian tsunami that kills as many people as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
It is as if some thoughtless egalitarian impulse is at work here, that in the end denies us what adjectives are supposed to provide- a sense of degree.
I propose a ten year moratorium on adjectives, a prescription which I will doubtless violate....with extreme prejudice.
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