South Padre Island, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 12.7 miles north of South Padre Island, TX
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 12.7 miles north of South Padre Island, TX, the shoreline has been moving inland at 3.22 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 32.2 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
South Padre Island, TX is the nearest named place, 12.7 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: 26.30, -97.22. 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.
What 3.22 ft/yr means over time
Run 12.7 miles north of South Padre Island, TX's 3.22 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 81 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
How solid is this number
Averaging 116 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±1.7 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 90 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 198 nationally for erosion belongs to South Bethany, DE, 1536 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.98 ft/yr, 0.3x this stretch's rate. 2 miles away, South Padre Island, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: severe erosion at 3.26 ft/yr.
Not this whole stretch, just South Padre Island itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.