West Cape May, NJ Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 0.3 miles southwest of West Cape May, NJ
Averaged across every transect USGS ran 0.3 miles southwest of West Cape May, NJ, the shoreline has been moving inland at 2.03 feet a year, a real measured rate, not a regional estimate applied to this stretch. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 20.3 feet over the last decade.
What "West Cape May" means on this page
West Cape May, NJ is the nearest named place, 0.3 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: 38.94, -74.94. USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment last surveyed this stretch through 2007-2009, computing the rate with its LRR method. Other US regions were surveyed in different years, sometimes decades apart, so this page states its own rather than implying one national vintage.
What 2.03 ft/yr means over time
Run 0.3 miles southwest of West Cape May, NJ's 2.03 ft/yr rate forward 25 years and it implies about 51 feet of further retreat, assuming nothing changes, which is exactly the assumption a seawall or nourishment project exists to break.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 73 individual transects averaged together, 75% of which measured erosion rather than growth. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.6 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 134. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Virginia Beach, VA, 166 miles away, ranks 132 of 1211 nationally for erosion, 2.07 ft/yr, 1.0x this stretch's rate. Cape May, NJ, 2.3 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near West Cape May: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.