Surfside Beach, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 6.1 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 6.1 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX, the shoreline has been moving inland at 1.16 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 11.6 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Surfside Beach, TX is the nearest named place, 6.1 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: 29.03, -95.23. 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.
What 1.16 ft/yr means over time
Run 6.1 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX's 1.16 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 29 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
Where this fits nationally
Averaging 14 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 ±1.09 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 185 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Rank 186 nationally for erosion belongs to Pineland, FL, 811 miles from this stretch, measured at 1.15 ft/yr, 1.0x this stretch's rate. 2 miles away, Surfside Beach, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: also no significant trend.
One address near Surfside Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.