Stowell, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 13.4 miles south of Stowell, TX?
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 13.4 miles south of Stowell, TX, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.4 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 14 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Stowell, TX is the nearest named place, 13.4 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: 29.59, -94.35. 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 1.4 ft/yr means over time
Run 13.4 miles south of Stowell, TX's 1.4 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 35 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
This reading comes from 105 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.57 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 166. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Bon Secour, AL sits at national rank 356 for erosion (0.39 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 389 miles from here. 1.9 miles away, Bolivar Peninsula, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 1.41 ft/yr.
Stowell, TX on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.