Cape Charles, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 10.4 miles southeast of Cape Charles, VA
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 10.4 miles southeast of Cape Charles, VA, the shoreline has been moving inland at 4.73 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 47.3 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Cape Charles, VA is the nearest named place, 10.4 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 37.14, -75.89. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
What 4.73 ft/yr means over time
Run 10.4 miles southeast of Cape Charles, VA's 4.73 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 118 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 54 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.19 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 55. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Weekapaug, RI, 363 miles away, ranks 612 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.12 ft/yr, a small fraction of this stretch's own rate. 1.9 miles away, Cape Charles, VA is the nearest other measured stretch: severe erosion at 4.69 ft/yr.
One address near Cape Charles: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.