The FBI recently released full 2014 crime statistics for its Uniform Crime Reporting program, and the results show how Columbus crime plummets between 2010 and 2014.
Let’s take a look at some of the numbers. First up, violent crimes.
Total violent crimes between 2010 and 2014 fell 16.6%, with any single person’s chances in 100k of being a victim of violent crime falling 21%. This is a pretty significant drop in just 4 years.
Here’s an individual violent crime breakdown: -Murders were down 15.2% -Rape was up 28.6%. The definition has changed in this time, which may explain some of that increase. -Robbery was down 37.7% -Aggravated Assault was up 14.6%.
So some good and bad. The good news for assault is that it’s well under where it was just 10 years ago, and almost 50% down from its historic peak in the early 1990s. It may have just been a bit worse year in 2014 for this, as all crime totals go through spikes even during a general decline. The bad news is that rape is historically high, but because the definitions have changed for it recently, it’s hard to make a fair comparison to previous years. If the current definition was in place years ago, it’s certainly possible it would now show a decline. Or, as with assault, rape totals could’ve seen a temporary spike above the trend line. Future years will tell the tale.
Now for property crime, something that’s always been somewhat high in Columbus, possibly due to the young population age and large number of college students.
Property crime in the city has dropped 29.8% 2010-2014, even more significant than the decrease in violent crime.
So what about 2015 and beyond? Well, indications are that crime is up for 2015 vs. last year, though there are differing theories as to why. Crime being up seems to be widespread in cities around the nation, and some of it has been attributed to a newfound national popularity in heroin. Until we see 2015’s number sometime next year, we won’t know exactly the impact. For now, we can celebrate that the city has indeed become safer.
I’ve compared Columbus to peer cities nationally in terms of density and population, but I’ve never made a Midwest cities historic population and density comparison overall. For the following, I used the top 15 largest Midwest cities as of 2014.
Red indicates a fallen ranking while blue indicates a rise. Black is no change.
Historic Population Rankings 1840 1. Cincinnati: 46,338 2. St. Louis: 16,469 3. Detroit: 9,102 4. Cleveland: 6,071 5. Columbus: 6,048 6. Chicago: 4,470 7. Indianapolis: 2,695 8. Milwaukee: 1,700 9. Toledo: 1,222 10. Kansas City: Not incorporated. 11. Lincoln: Not incorporated. 12. Minneapolis: Not incorporated. 13. Omaha: Not incorporated. 14. St. Paul: Not incorporated. 15. Wichita: Not incorporated.
1850 1. Cincinnati: 115,435 2. St. Louis: 77,860 3. Chicago: 29,963 4. Detroit: 21,019 5. Milwaukee: 20,061 6. Columbus: 17,882 7. Cleveland: 17,034 8. Indianapolis: 8,091 9. Toledo: 3,829 10. St. Paul: 1,112 11. Kansas City: Not incorporated. 12. Lincoln: Not incorporated. 13. Minneapolis: Not incorporated. 14. Omaha: Not incorporated. 15. Wichita: Not incorporated.
Columbus seems poised to take the #2 spot from Indianapolis around or just after 2020. Also, 11 of 15 would’ve seen growth 2010-2020. Cleveland, Toledo, St. Louis and Detroit would be the only cities that still lost.
Similar to other posts that show how Columbus has been changing, the link below from the site Urb-I has hundreds of before and after worldwide photos of streetscape changes. Columbus itself is not included, but perhaps that can be changed as the site allows anyone to submit images.
As summer slowly approaches its inevitable end, thoughts of winter have started to creep into our minds. The last two winters seemed particularly harsh, and questions were often asked as to their historic status as well as whether another bad winter was on the way. Ask any older person in Ohio, and the winters between 1976 and 1979 will often come up. But do they really deserve their reputations? To find out, I came up with a ranking system for meteorological winter only- December through February0- to rank the worst winters of all time. Here was the criteria:
Temperature: # of 32 or Below Highs, # of 32 or Below Lows, # of 0 or Below Highs, # of 0 or Below Lows: Each earned the winter a point for each day that featured these conditions. # of 60 or Above Highs and # of 50 or Above Lows meant a point was removed for each occurrence.
Precipitation: # of Days with Measurable Snowfall, # of 1″+ Snow Days, # of 2.5″+ Snow Days, # of 5″+ Snow Days, # of 10″+ Snow Days as well as # of Measurable Precipitation Days all counted as 1 point for each occurrence.
I then added the temperature and precipitation points together to come up with a ranking for how miserable each winter really was.
Do any of these surprise you? Both 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 are in the top 30 worst, but only 2013-2014 is in the top 10. In fact, other recent winters like 2000-2001, 2002-2003, 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 are all ranked worse than last winter. There have been a surprising number of recent winters in the top 30, however. There have been 8 total since 2000. No other similar time frame has produced as many.
Look how many of the warmest/least snowy occur between 1920 and 1945. Historically, this period had the fewest number of cold and/or snowy winters on record of any such 25-year period.
And what about winter 2015-2016? Well, that remains to be seen. However, the developing strong El Nino suggests a warmer than average winter. However, factors such as its position (west or east-based) as well as the PDO could throw some wrenches into that standard El Nino forecast. Either way, it will likely not be a top 30 worst.
This summer has been wet… very wet. Rain has fallen on far more days than not, and cloud cover has hung thick and heavy in what are historically much sunnier months. To top it all off, temperatures have been somewhat below normal.
How wet has the Summer of Rain 2015 been up through today? Meteorological summer runs June 1st-August 31st, and today makes the midpoint of that period, so I thought it would be a good time to check in and answer that question.
Here are the top 10 wettest summers through yesterday. 1. 1958: 12.54″ 2. 2008: 11.68″ 3. 1990: 10.93″ 4. 2015: 10.66″ 5. 1949: 10.40″ 6. 1973: 10.23″ 7. 1917: 10.06″ 8. 1928: 10.02″ 9. 1937: 9.75″ 10. 1969: 9.38″
So 2015 is running the 4th wettest. It looks to be dry the next few days before more thunderstorms and rain return, so 2015′s position may end up rising.
What are the wettest full summers of all time? A few of the above years went on to be in the top 10, but not all. 1. 1958: 22.02″ 2. 1979: 20.92″ 3. 1995: 19.85″ 4. 2003: 19.39″ 5. 1969: 19.09″ 6. 1915: 18.92″ 7. 1992: 18.44″ 8. 1973: 17.81″ 9. 1989: 17.45″ 10. 1949: 16.54″
Summer 2015 needs about 6″ more to reach into the top 10 wettest summers, which at the current pace is more than possible.
