This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Hanks Corner 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.
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 0 Hanks Corner residents, or 0.4%, live above that level. By land area, 0.3% of Hanks Corner is above 55 dBA.
See how noise in Hanks Corner compares to similar-sized cities.
Noise by Part of Hanks Corner
Average noise levels for Hanks Corner residents, grouped by direction from the center of Hanks Corner. Eastern Hanks Corner carries the highest population-weighted average; Western Hanks Corner carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Western Hanks Corner live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Eastern Hanks Corner.
Eastern Hanks Corner
1% of people above 55 dBA
Northern Hanks Corner
0% of people above 55 dBA
Southern Hanks Corner
0% of people above 55 dBA
Western Hanks Corner
0% of people above 55 dBA
Eastern Hanks Corner sounds about 114% louder than Western Hanks Corner to the human ear, a 11.0 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.
Loudest Road Corridors
The model evaluates every road in Hanks Corner 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.
How far back from Borderavene do you need to be?
Borderavene produces an estimated 55 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.
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 12% of Hanks Corner sits under tree canopy (lighter than most cities) and roughly 0% 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 Hanks Corner
The bar chart below shows the share of Hanks Corner 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 Hanks Corner Compares
Hanks Corner sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Hanks Corner's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Hallson, Concrete, Milton, and Leyden.
Average noise level (dBA)
Hanks Corner's 37.7 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. North Dakota as a whole averages 50.1 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Hanks Corner because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 0.4% of Hanks Corner 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, 0.3% of Hanks Corner's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a North Dakota average of 11.5% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Hanks Corner
- 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 Borderavene 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 12% of Hanks Corner is under tree cover (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
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.
Federal datasets used:
FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System: road geometry, traffic counts, lane configuration
U.S. DoT Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Noise Map: aviation and rail noise, road calibration ground truth
USGS / MRLC National Land Cover Database: land cover and impervious surface coverage
USDA Forest Service Tree Canopy Cover: vegetation density for sound propagation
U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line: block-level geography and population
U.S. EPA Levels Document: 55 dBA outdoor reference level
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.