Noise Levels in Bird Island, MN | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

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 505 Bird Island residents, or 39.0%, live above that level. By land area, 30.5% of Bird Island is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in Bird Island compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of Bird Island

Average noise levels for Bird Island residents, grouped by direction from the center of Bird Island. Central Bird Island carries the highest population-weighted average; Northern Bird Island carries the lowest. Just 2% of residents in Northern Bird Island live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Central Bird Island.

Central Bird Island sounds about 162% louder than Northern Bird Island to the human ear, a 13.9 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.

Loudest Road Corridors

The model evaluates every road in Bird Island 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.

Rail Noise

Active freight rail runs through parts of Bird Island. For most blocks the rail-only contribution is small. Combined road-plus-rail noise rarely exceeds road noise on its own. The exceptions are the handful of blocks within roughly a quarter mile of the right-of-way during pass-through hours.

Use the Rail toggle on the map above to isolate rail's contribution from road and aviation.

How Noise Is Distributed Across Bird Island

The bar chart below shows the share of Bird Island residents in each noise band. About 63% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 5% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How Bird Island Compares

Bird Island sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Bird Island's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Hector, Buffalo Lake, Fairfax, and Cosmos.

Average noise level (dBA)

Bird Island's 49.8 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Minnesota as a whole averages 53.6 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Bird Island because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 39.0% of Bird Island 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, 30.5% of Bird Island's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Minnesota average of 31.0% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to Bird Island

• 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 770TH St 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 3% of Bird Island is under tree cover (much lighter than most cities), and the dominant land cover is cultivated cropland. 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