Hurricane/Cyclone satellite tracking only went up in the sixties, but the Dvorak technique to establish intensities was not underway until the seventies. And according to those who worked with the technique have reported it was immensely tricky and subjective when it was done without additional information from buoys or air reconnaissance. One wonders how many of those were done in the Indian Ocean. (If you'd believe this PDF from the NMFC there were none in the North Indian ocean in 1983).

So yes, clearly it may be unprecedented. Since the 1970s. It is abundantly reasonable then that the media labels it Death Storm.