Palacios, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 12.9 miles south of Palacios, TX?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 12.9 miles south of Palacios, TX, 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 Palacios, TX, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 28.53, -96.18. USGS's Gulf of Mexico assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2001, 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.
Where this fits nationally
43 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.04 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -0.56 ft/yr, would place it 278 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: Blue Point, NY, 1556 miles away, ranks 1037 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.57 ft/yr. Palacios, TX, 1.8 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading moderate erosion at 1.02 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just Palacios itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.