Virginia Beach, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 7.4 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA
The coast 7.4 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA has been retreating at a measured 2.4 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 24 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
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 Virginia Beach, VA. Centered near 36.70°N, 75.94°W. Survey years: 2007-2009, method LRR, from USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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.
25 years at this rate
If 2.4 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 7.4 miles southeast of Virginia Beach, VA would retreat roughly 60 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
How solid is this number
118 transects feed this segment's number; 100% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.53 ft/yr. This segment ranks 111 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Slidell, LA, 876 miles away, ranks 59 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 4.59 ft/yr, 1.9x this stretch's rate. 2.2 miles away, Virginia Beach, VA is the nearest other measured stretch: moderate erosion at 2.07 ft/yr.
One address near Virginia Beach: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.