The Hurricane Season officially starts on Monday, June 1^st, but we’ve already had a preview this week.

Initially storms are called an “Invest” with a number in the range of 90 to 99 followed by a letter suffix, L for an Atlantic storm and E for an Eastern Pacific storm. When they reach 99, they go back to 90.

When they graduate after developing tropical characteristics, they are called Tropical Depressions, which are numbered beginning at 1 every season.

If the circulation spins up and winds increase, they become Tropical Storms and are given a name from a pre-approved list for the season. These are the names for this year’s storms:

If the list runs out, later storms are designated using the Greek alphabet, i.e. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, as happened in 2005 when we got to Tropical Storm Zeta.

The constant wind speed is the biggest determinate as to whether an individual system is called a storm or a hurricane, and if a hurricane, its category.

On this day in 1431 Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen for winning battles against armies lead by middle-aged white guys, while knowingly, willfully, and with malice aforethought, being a teen-aged girl.

As she was an unlawful enemy combatant, since everyone knew that girls couldn’t fight, much less lead armies, she was charged with unlawful conversations with saints without benefit of or permission from the clergy. She couldn’t legally be a combatant, so she couldn’t be a prisoner of war, so they had to find some way of getting rid of her.

She was cleared of all charges on appeal, which didn’t occur until after she had been executed, but no system is fool-proof.

To make up for the fact that the execution was a bit premature, she was eventually made a saint, and is the patron of martyrs, captives, militants, prisoners, and soldiers.