Rain and more rain this early Thursday on California’s north coast, supposedly the same story at least until the end of next week — thick clouds and chilly air, normal weather for here.
We’re forecast to get sunshine on Sunday, but that’s a maybe.

One aspect of the local area I find disheartening is the increasing extremity of excitement in the air — not the fun kind, either, but seemingly more car wrecks with more fatalities, more shootings and bodies found alongside roadways, and more crime in general.
Unfortunately, it’s not just my wild imagination this time. On Tuesday, Lost Coast Outpost took a look locally at national crime stats: ‘Well, the most recent numbers are in, and the answer seems clear: Maybe we’re all more paranoid than we were before, but crime of all sorts is on the rise in Humboldt County. And in some cases, it’s rising very rapidly.’

(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica,’  found here).

And that’s not just a local view, either.
From NBCBayArea yesterday:

However, a deeper dive into the numbers reveals that when it comes to overall crime rate — violent crime incidents plus property crime incidents per 1,000 people — it’s Emeryville that actually has the highest rate of crime in the California.
Eureka in Humboldt County is next.
Oakland is third.

My underline for personal emphasis — Eureka is about 10 miles south of where I’m now sitting on my ass, but for some reason, a lot of the culprits, perps, and all forms of shady characters involved in this criminal activity seem to come from my town, Mckinleyville.
Why? Not a clue.

Hank Sims in the Outpost piece on the FBI crime report uses charts, graphs in combination with math to break-down the ugly numbers, and they’re not pretty:

The first thing you can tell from this chart is that though the state and national violent crime rates have been steadily falling since 2000, and continued to fall in 2013, the crime rate of every Humboldt County agency (except Fortuna) rose last year.
For the first time, the per capita number of violent crimes reported to the Arcata Police Department is greater than the national average.
And violent crime absolutely took off like a rocket in Eureka, landing at 714 per 100,000 residents, or nearly double the national average.
…
Same deal: Property crime is down nationally and statewide, but up almost everywhere in Humboldt County and way up in Eureka and Arcata.

And what’s the deal?
Little towns, I guess, are becoming the end destination for a thieving class, or something.