Warrington, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 3.7 miles southeast of Warrington, FL
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 3.7 miles southeast of Warrington, FL, the shoreline has been moving inland at 0.55 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 5.5 feet over the last decade.
What this reading actually covers
Warrington, FL is the nearest named place, 3.7 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: 30.34, -87.25. 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 0.55 ft/yr means over time
Run 3.7 miles southeast of Warrington, FL's 0.55 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 14 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
What backs this reading up
This reading comes from 126 individual transects averaged together, 65% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.54 ft/yr. This segment ranks 284 of 1211 measured US coastal segments, ordered from fastest erosion to fastest growth. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. Hampton Bays, NY sits at national rank 312 for erosion (0.46 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 1098 miles from here. 2.5 miles up the coast, Pensacola Station, FL shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Warrington: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.