Mexico Beach, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.4 miles northeast of Mexico Beach, FL
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 1.4 miles northeast of Mexico Beach, FL, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
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 Mexico Beach, FL, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 29.96, -85.40. Survey years: 2001, method LRR, from USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 82 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 0% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.35 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, 0.3 ft/yr, would place it 961 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 Open-File Report 2004-1089. Dana Point, CA sits at national rank 1006 for growth (0.44 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1908 miles from here. Mexico Beach, FL, 2.1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading accretion (beach growing) at 1.54 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Mexico Beach itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.