Ocean City, WA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 1 miles northwest of Ocean City, WA?
Unusual good news for this stretch: the shoreline 1 miles northwest of Ocean City, WA has grown by a measured 4.1 feet a year on average, per USGS's long-term transect data for this section. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 41 feet over the last decade.
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 Ocean City, WA. Centered near 47.09°N, 124.17°W. USGS's Pacific Northwest assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2002-2011, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
25 years at this rate
Holding the 4.1 ft/yr accretion rate 1 miles northwest of Ocean City, WA for 25 years would add roughly 102 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
This reading comes from 77 individual transects averaged together, 0% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1192. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2012-1008. For scale: Grayland, WA, 21 miles away, ranks 1173 of 1211 nationally for growth, 2.4 ft/yr, 0.6x this stretch's rate. 1.5 miles up the coast, Copalis Beach, WA shows 3.87 ft/yr of accreting.
Ocean City, WA on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.