Noise Levels in North Riverside, SD | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
38 dBA
Average noise across North Riverside
Soft rainfall
0
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
1% of North Riverside residents
62 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across North Riverside 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 0 North Riverside residents, or 0.8%, live above that level. By land area, 0.6% of North Riverside is above 55 dBA.
Northern North Riverside sounds about 0% louder than Southern North Riverside to the human ear, a 0.0 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.
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Loudest Road Corridors
The model evaluates every road in North Riverside 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.
RoadTypeAvg. source dBAPeak source dBA
Bia Rd 810Local59.059
146 StLocal54.259
141 StLocal59.059
299 AveLocal59.059
297 AveMajor collector51.259
How far back from Bia Rd 810 do you need to be?
Bia Rd 810 produces an estimated 59 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
59 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
165 ft
45 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
38 dBA
Soft rainfall
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 0% of North Riverside sits under tree canopy (much 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 North Riverside
The bar chart below shows the share of North Riverside 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 North Riverside Compares
North Riverside sits the lowest among the peer group. Below: how North Riverside's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Fayette, Lucas, Owattonna, and Cattron.
Average noise level (dBA)
North Riverside's 38.4 dBA pop-weighted average is the lowest among the peer group. South Dakota as a whole averages 52.6 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than North Riverside because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 0.8% of North Riverside residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's fewer than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 0.6% of North Riverside's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a South Dakota average of 20.8% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to North Riverside
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 Bia Rd 810 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 0% of North Riverside 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
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.
