South Padre Island, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 9.2 miles north of South Padre Island, TX
2.9 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 9.2 miles north of South Padre Island, TX, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 29 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest South Padre Island, TX into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 26.25°N, 97.21°W. 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.
25 years at this rate
If 2.9 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 9.2 miles north of South Padre Island, TX would retreat roughly 73 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 114 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 100% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.36 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 98. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 276 nationally for erosion belongs to Taholah, WA, 2069 miles from this stretch, measured at 0.57 ft/yr, 0.2x this stretch's rate. South Padre Island, TX, 3.5 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading moderate erosion at 2.78 ft/yr.
One address near South Padre Island: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.