Stowell, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 12.8 miles southeast of Stowell, TX
The coast 12.8 miles southeast of Stowell, TX has been retreating at a measured 2.22 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 22.2 feet over the last decade.
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 Stowell, TX. Centered near 29.62°N, 94.26°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 2.22 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 12.8 miles southeast of Stowell, TX would retreat roughly 56 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
Averaging 55 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 ±0.92 ft/yr. This segment ranks 121 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Vineyard Haven, MA, 1540 miles away, ranks 335 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 0.43 ft/yr, 0.2x this stretch's rate. 1.6 miles away, Stowell, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 2.3 ft/yr.
One address near Stowell: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.