Ferndale, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 14.5 miles southwest of Ferndale, CA
14.5 miles southwest of Ferndale, CA, the coast is advancing, not retreating, at a measured 0.26 feet a year, sediment accumulating faster than any erosion USGS recorded here. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 2.6 feet over the last decade.
What "Ferndale" means on this page
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Ferndale, CA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 40.39, -124.37. Survey years: 1852-2016, method LRR, from USGS's California 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 0.26 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 0.26 ft/yr accretion rate 14.5 miles southwest of Ferndale, CA for 25 years would add roughly 7 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 47 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 9% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.17 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 953 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 1110 nationally for growth belongs to Ocean City, NJ, 2606 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.02 ft/yr, 3.9x this stretch's rate. Ferndale, CA, 2 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.