Ferndale, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 4.3 miles west of Ferndale, CA
Nothing alarming measured 4.3 miles west of Ferndale, CA: whatever shift USGS's transects picked up here is too small to call reliably one way or the other, which this site reports as "no significant trend" rather than forcing a direction.
What this reading actually covers
Ferndale, CA is the nearest named place, 4.3 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: 40.60, -124.34. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 111 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 82% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.74 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.61 ft/yr, would place it 263 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Ocean Park, WA sits at national rank 1113 for growth (1.04 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 411 miles from here. Ferndale, CA, 1.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Ferndale: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.