Noise Levels in Oak Leaf, TX | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
44 dBA
Average noise across Oak Leaf
Quiet suburban street at night
48
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
4% of Oak Leaf residents
56 dBA
Loudest residential point
Quiet office to normal conversation
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Oak Leaf 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 48 Oak Leaf residents, or 3.9%, live above that level. By land area, 6.5% of Oak Leaf is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Oak Leaf residents, grouped by direction from the center of Oak Leaf. Northern Oak Leaf carries the highest population-weighted average; Central Oak Leaf carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Central Oak Leaf live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fraction of the share in Northern Oak Leaf.
Central Oak Leaf
34.5 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Oak Leaf
44.9 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
2% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Oak Leaf
49.2 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Oak Leaf
39.0 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Oak Leaf
48.1 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office
18% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Oak Leaf sounds about 177% louder than Central Oak Leaf to the human ear, a 14.7 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 do you need to be?
produces an estimated 56 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
56 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
165 ft
42 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
35 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 8% of Oak Leaf sits under tree canopy (lighter than most 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.
-->
Airport Noise
Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW) sits north of Oak Leaf. 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 Oak Leaf, particularly to the south, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Oak Leaf
The bar chart below shows the share of Oak Leaf 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 Oak Leaf Compares
Oak Leaf sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Oak Leaf's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Warsaw, Forreston, Cockrell Hill, and Milford.
Average noise level (dBA)
Oak Leaf's 44.0 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 Oak Leaf because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 3.9% of Oak Leaf 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, 6.5% of Oak Leaf'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 Oak Leaf
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 8% of Oak Leaf is under tree cover (lighter than most 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. Dallas-Fort Worth International's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the north. Neighborhoods to the south 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.
