Surfside Beach, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 8.2 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX
1.58 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 8.2 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 15.8 feet over the last decade.
The grain of this number
Nothing here is parcel-level. USGS's raw transects run every few hundred feet along the shore; this page averages the ones nearest Surfside Beach, TX into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 29.05°N, 95.20°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 1.58 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 8.2 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX would retreat roughly 40 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
This reading comes from 120 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 1.34 ft/yr either side. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 153. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Grand Isle, LA, 302 miles away, ranks 8 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 17.17 ft/yr, many times over this stretch's own rate. Surfside Beach, TX, 2.1 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, reading moderate erosion at 1.16 ft/yr.
One address near Surfside Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.