Dewey Beach, DE Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 3.2 miles south of Dewey Beach, DE
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 3.2 miles south of Dewey Beach, DE, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.17 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 11.7 feet over the last decade.
What "Dewey Beach" means on this page
Dewey Beach, DE is the nearest named place, 3.2 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: 38.65, -75.08. 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.
What 1.17 ft/yr means over time
Run 3.2 miles south of Dewey Beach, DE's 1.17 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 29 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
How solid is this number
110 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.3 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 183. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Virginia Beach, VA sits at national rank 132 for erosion (2.07 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 144 miles from here. 2.8 miles away, Long Neck, DE is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 2.08 ft/yr.
One address near Dewey Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.