Cheriton, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 10.3 miles southeast of Cheriton, VA
3.98 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 10.3 miles southeast of Cheriton, VA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 39.8 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Cheriton, VA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 37.20°N, 75.82°W. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
If 3.98 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 10.3 miles southeast of Cheriton, VA would retreat roughly 100 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 64 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±3 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 73. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Lompoc, CA, 2489 miles away, ranks 259 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.62 ft/yr, 0.2x this stretch's rate. 1.7 miles up the coast, Cheriton, VA shows 5.55 ft/yr of eroding.
One address near Cheriton: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.