Noise Levels in 40913, KY | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
43 dBA
Average noise across 40913
Quiet suburban street at night
5
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
2% of 40913 residents
62 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across 40913 at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.
Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
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35 dBa55 dBa (EPA limit)90+ dBa
3545557090
Quietest (dBA)Loudest
Colorblind friendlyoff
What the numbers sound like
30 dBAWhisper
40 dBASoft rainfall
45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
50 dBAQuiet office
55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
65 dBABusy restaurant
70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
80 dBACity bus interior
Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold
The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 5 40913 residents, or 1.9%, live above that level. By land area, 5.7% of 40913 is above 55 dBA.
Northern 40913 sounds about 0% louder than Southern 40913 to the human ear, a 0.0 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.
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Loudest Road Corridors
The model evaluates every road in 40913 using federal traffic counts, posted speeds, heavy-truck ratios, and pavement type. The source level shown is the modeled noise at the road centerline, where it is loudest. Noise drops with distance, faster in vegetated areas and slower over open pavement.
RoadTypeAvg. source dBAPeak source dBA
Ky-2011Minor collector58.058
Ky-1524Minor collector58.058
Cow Fork RdLocal55.055
Ky-66Major collector53.555
How far back from Ky-2011 do you need to be?
Ky-2011 produces an estimated 58 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.
At source
58 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
165 ft
44 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
36 dBA
Soft rainfall
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 75% of 40913 sits under tree canopy (much heavier than most zip codes) and roughly 2% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.
How Noise Is Distributed Across 40913
The bar chart below shows the share of 40913 residents in each noise band. About 100% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 0% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How 40913 Compares
40913 sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how 40913's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with 40997, 40982, 40874, and 41775.
Average noise level (dBA)
40913's 42.9 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. Kentucky as a whole averages 50.5 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than 40913 because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 1.9% of 40913 residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's in the middle of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 5.7% of 40913's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Kentucky average of 23.2% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to 40913
Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from Ky-2011 and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 75% of 40913 is under tree cover (much heavier than most zip codes), and the dominant land cover is deciduous forest. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.
Sources & Methodology
The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.
All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.
