Orange Beach, AL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 1.9 miles southwest of Orange Beach, AL
Nothing alarming measured 1.9 miles southwest of Orange Beach, AL: whatever shift USGS's transects picked up here is too small to call reliably one way or the other, which this site reports as "no significant trend" rather than forcing a direction.
The grain of this number
Orange Beach, AL is the nearest named place, 1.9 miles away, to a ~3.5-mile stretch of coast USGS has surveyed - the reading below covers that whole stretch, not a single property in it. Segment center: 30.27, -87.62. The survey behind it runs to 2001, in USGS's Gulf of Mexico 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
Averaging 39 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. Uncertainty on this specific number: 0.48 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.33 ft/yr, would place it 387 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. For scale: Marina del Rey, CA, 1817 miles away, ranks 1115 of 1211 nationally for growth, 1.04 ft/yr. 1.5 miles away, Orange Beach, AL is the nearest other measured stretch: slight erosion at 0.37 ft/yr.
Orange Beach, AL on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.