Surfside Beach, TX Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 10.7 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX?
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 10.7 miles northeast of Surfside Beach, TX, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What "Surfside Beach" means on this page
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Surfside Beach, TX, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 29.07, -95.17. 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 backs this reading up
This reading comes from 48 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 2.94 ft/yr either side. The unadjusted figure here, -1.98 ft/yr, would place it 138 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. For scale: Kennebunkport, ME, 1683 miles away, ranks 933 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.22 ft/yr. 1.9 miles away, Jamaica Beach, TX is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 2.72 ft/yr.
One address near Surfside Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.