Noise Levels in Mountain Home, TX | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

40 dBA
Average noise across Mountain Home
Soft rainfall
74
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
6% of Mountain Home residents
79 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Mountain Home 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
Mountain Home, TX Map of Noise Levels in Mountain Home
Click the map to explore
35 45 55 70 90
Quietest (dBA) Loudest
Colorblind friendly off

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 74 Mountain Home residents, or 6.4%, live above that level. By land area, 11.8% of Mountain Home is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in Mountain Home compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of Mountain Home

Average noise levels for Mountain Home residents, grouped by direction from the center of Mountain Home. Northern Mountain Home carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Mountain Home carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Southern Mountain Home live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Northern Mountain Home.

Eastern Mountain Home

42.0 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

10% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern Mountain Home

48.1 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office

9% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern Mountain Home

31.4 dBA · Quiet
Whisper

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Western Mountain Home

33.6 dBA · Quiet
Whisper

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern Mountain Home sounds about 218% louder than Southern Mountain Home to the human ear, a 16.7 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 I-10 do you need to be?

I-10 produces an estimated 75 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
75 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
60 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
330 ft
52 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
660 ft
44 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall

Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 13% of Mountain Home 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.

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How Noise Is Distributed Across Mountain Home

The bar chart below shows the share of Mountain Home residents in each noise band. About 82% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 12% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How Mountain Home Compares

Mountain Home sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Mountain Home's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Hunt, Legion, Tivydale, and Harper.

Average noise level (dBA)

Mountain Home's 40.5 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Texas as a whole averages 50.8 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Mountain Home because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 6.4% of Mountain Home residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's more than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 11.8% of Mountain Home's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Texas average of 22.8% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to Mountain Home

  • 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 I-10 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 13% of Mountain Home is under tree cover (lighter than most cities), and the dominant land cover is shrub / scrub. 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.

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