San Simeon, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 2.5 miles south of San Simeon, CA
2.5 miles south of San Simeon, 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.
The grain of this number
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 San Simeon, CA. Centered near 35.58°N, 121.12°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.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 33 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 97% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.74 ft/yr. Taken at face value, this segment's raw -0.3 ft/yr reading would land it 405 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: Sarita, TX, 1510 miles away, ranks 1087 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.88 ft/yr. 1.3 miles away, Cambria, CA is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near San Simeon: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.