Willis Wharf, VA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 9.9 miles southeast of Willis Wharf, VA?
11.76 feet a year: that is the measured retreat rate USGS's transects show for the coast 9.9 miles southeast of Willis Wharf, VA, averaged across the full historical record surveyed here. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 117.6 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 Willis Wharf, VA into one ~3.5-mile reading rather than picking a single arbitrary line to represent the area. Centered near 37.40°N, 75.70°W. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic 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 11.76 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 9.9 miles southeast of Willis Wharf, VA would retreat roughly 294 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 101 individual transects averaged together, 100% of which measured erosion rather than growth. Uncertainty on this specific number: 3.09 ft/yr either side. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 19 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. Boothville, LA sits at national rank 125 for erosion (2.18 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 913 miles from here. 2.6 miles up the coast, Quinby, VA shows 3.29 ft/yr of accreting.
One address near Willis Wharf: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.