McKinleyville, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 2.8 miles west of McKinleyville, CA
2.8 miles west of McKinleyville, CA: USGS's transects didn't pick up a trend here that beats the survey's own uncertainty. That's the majority case nationally, and for this stretch specifically it means the coast is holding, not that the data failed to find anything.
What this reading actually covers
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest McKinleyville, CA. Centered near 40.94°N, 124.13°W. 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.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 86 individual transects averaged together, 27% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.59 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw 0.05 ft/yr reading would land it 820 of 1211 nationally - a number worth ignoring, since it's statistical noise rather than a real trend. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. For scale: Seal Beach, CA, 598 miles away, ranks 1072 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.73 ft/yr. McKinleyville, CA, 1.8 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
Not this whole stretch, just McKinleyville itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.