The number are in, and on the surface, they don’t look good.

Foreclosure petitions were up statewide for the 17th straight month in July, rising 49 percent from July 2014, according to the most recent report from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

But as B&T’s savvy readers know, these are not new problems or an indication that the housing market is about to fall off another cliff. Much as planes coming into Logan hit some turbulence on the way to a safe landing, the foreclosure numbers continue to temporarily jump around as the market smooths out in response to the legislation and court cases of a few years ago.

Once again the figures are stark in Nantucket County, which saw a 50 percent drop in foreclosure starts in July – but the numbers tell another story. There were two foreclosure petitions in Nantucket in July 2014 and one in July 2015, making that figure statistically insignificant – but year-to-date, Nantucket County is up 275 percent, the most of any county in the Bay State. (That’s four starts in 2014 and 15 in 2015, if you’re keeping score at home.)

Nantucket is also suffering this year in home sales, down 12 percent year-to-date, though the year-to-date median price is up nearly 11 percent.

There’s good news out of the west, where Hampden County seems to be on the end of its whiplash. With foreclosure deeds up 78 percent in July and starts up only 23 percent, the county may have seen the worst of this go-round. Additionally heartening, the county’s home sales are up 46 percent in July and the median price is up 6.4 percent.

Franklin County came in with the lowest rates of foreclosure starts in July, where petitions are actually down 9 percent, auctions are down 22 percent and deeds up 25 percent (from four in 2014 to five in 2015). The year-to-date figures aren’t as great, though, coming up 79 percent for petitions, up 82 percent for auctions and up 3 percent for deeds.

In Greater Boston, starts and deeds slowed in Suffolk County in July, though auctions took a 91 percent leap; in Essex, it was the opposite, with starts up 35 percent, auctions up only 6 percent and deeds up 118 percent.

And so it goes all over the state. The numbers and percentages leap and fall each month, but add up to a rough ride for homeowners and lenders alike.

It was in 2013 when foreclosure petitions hit a sudden stop, going from 856 in February to 283 in March and staying well below normal throughout the remainder of the year. As would follow, foreclosure starts have been up by double and in some cases triple digits since March 2014. But the highs may be beginning to slow their spikes, and though industry experts say the turbulence will likely continue for another 12 to 18 months, perhaps the bumps won’t be quite so bad.