Noise Levels in Lake St. Croix Beach, MN | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
56 dBA
Average noise across Lake St. Croix Beach
Quiet office to normal conversation
389
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
55% of Lake St. Croix Beach residents
63 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Lake St. Croix Beach 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 389 Lake St. Croix Beach residents, or 54.9%, live above that level. By land area, 62.0% of Lake St. Croix Beach is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Lake St. Croix Beach residents, grouped by direction from the center of Lake St. Croix Beach. Central Lake St. Croix Beach carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Lake St. Croix Beach carries the lowest. Just 44% of residents in Southern Lake St. Croix Beach live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, three-quarters of the share in Central Lake St. Croix Beach.
Central Lake St. Croix Beach
56.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
60% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Lake St. Croix Beach
54.4 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
41% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Lake St. Croix Beach
54.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
44% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Lake St. Croix Beach
56.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
100% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Central Lake St. Croix Beach sounds about 15% louder than Southern Lake St. Croix Beach to the human ear, a 2.0 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.
How far back from do you need to be?
produces an estimated 63 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
63 dBA
Busy restaurant
165 ft
51 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
330 ft
44 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
660 ft
37 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 40% of Lake St. Croix Beach sits under tree canopy (about average for cities) and roughly 22% 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
Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain (MSP) sits west of Lake St. Croix Beach. 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 Lake St. Croix Beach, particularly to the east, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Lake St. Croix Beach
The bar chart below shows the share of Lake St. Croix Beach residents in each noise band. About 31% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 8% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Lake St. Croix Beach Compares
Lake St. Croix Beach sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Lake St. Croix Beach's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Pine Springs, Landfall, Willernie, and Lakeland Shores.
Average noise level (dBA)
Lake St. Croix Beach's 55.6 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 Lake St. Croix Beach because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 54.9% of Lake St. Croix Beach 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, 62.0% of Lake St. Croix Beach'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 Lake St. Croix Beach
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 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 40% of Lake St. Croix Beach is under tree cover (about average for cities), and the dominant land cover is low-intensity developed land. 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. Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the west. Neighborhoods to the east 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.
