Long Beach, WA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 0.8 miles south of Long Beach, WA
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 0.8 miles south of Long Beach, WA has grown by a measured 5.97 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 59.7 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
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 Long Beach, WA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 46.35, -124.05. Survey years: 2002-2011, method LRR, from USGS's Pacific Northwest 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 5.97 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 5.97 ft/yr accretion rate 0.8 miles south of Long Beach, WA for 25 years would add roughly 149 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 109 individual transects averaged together, 0% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±1.07 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1204. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2012-1008. Rank 1177 nationally for growth belongs to Port O'Connor, TX, 1943 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.77 ft/yr, 0.5x this stretch's rate. 3.5 miles away, Long Beach, WA is the nearest other measured stretch: accretion (beach growing) at 5.37 ft/yr.
Long Beach, WA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.