Noise Levels in Cooksville, MD | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
55 dBA
Average noise across Cooksville
Quiet office to normal conversation
278
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
24% of Cooksville residents
80 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Cooksville 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
Click the map to explore
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 278 Cooksville residents, or 23.9%, live above that level. By land area, 26.0% of Cooksville is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Cooksville residents, grouped by direction from the center of Cooksville. Western Cooksville carries the highest population-weighted average; Northern Cooksville carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Northern Cooksville live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Western Cooksville.
Eastern Cooksville
61.7 dBA · Loud
Busy restaurant
31% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Cooksville
37.2 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
1% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Cooksville
48.0 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office
9% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Cooksville
67.6 dBA · Loud
Highway traffic 50 ft away
56% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Cooksville sounds about 722% louder than Northern Cooksville to the human ear, a 30.4 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.
How far back from US Hwy 40 do you need to be?
US Hwy 40 produces an estimated 76 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 quiet suburban street at night.
At source
76 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
63 dBA
Busy restaurant
330 ft
56 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
660 ft
49 dBA
Quiet office
¼ mile
41 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 47% of Cooksville sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 3% 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.
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Airport Noise
Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) sits southeast of Cooksville. The U.S. Department of Transportation measures aviation noise around this airport directly, and the model uses those federal measurements rather than synthetic predictions.
Blocks under the approach and departure paths carry combined road-plus-aviation noise, with some exceeding 75 dBA on the map's Overall layer. Blocks on the opposite side of Cooksville, particularly to the northwest, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Cooksville
The bar chart below shows the share of Cooksville residents in each noise band. About 42% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 22% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Cooksville Compares
Cooksville sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Cooksville's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Laytonsville, Annapolis Junction, Windsor Mill, and Chevy Chase View.
Average noise level (dBA)
Cooksville's 54.8 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Maryland as a whole averages 52.3 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Cooksville because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 23.9% of Cooksville 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, 26.0% of Cooksville's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Maryland average of 32.9% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Cooksville
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 US Hwy 40 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 47% of Cooksville is under tree cover (heavier than most cities), 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.
Airport noise is directional. Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the southeast. Neighborhoods to the northwest of downtown show no measurable contribution from the airport.
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.
