Stowell, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 12.7 miles south of Stowell, TX
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 12.7 miles south of Stowell, TX, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.83 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 18.3 feet over the last decade.
What "Stowell" means on this page
Stowell, 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: 29.61, -94.30. 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 1.83 ft/yr means over time
Run 12.7 miles south of Stowell, TX's 1.83 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 46 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
105 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.51 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 142. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Atlantic, VA sits at national rank 149 for erosion (1.68 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1221 miles from here. 2.5 miles up the coast, Stowell, TX shows 2.22 ft/yr of eroding.
Not this whole stretch, just Stowell itself: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal is USGS's own live version of this data.