Noise Levels in Olivet Hill, MD | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
46 dBA
Average noise across Olivet Hill
Quiet suburban street at night
11
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
4% of Olivet Hill residents
73 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Olivet Hill 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 11 Olivet Hill residents, or 3.6%, live above that level. By land area, 34.6% of Olivet Hill is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Olivet Hill residents, grouped by direction from the center of Olivet Hill. Northern Olivet Hill carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Olivet Hill carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Southern Olivet Hill live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Northern Olivet Hill.
Eastern Olivet Hill
44.4 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
2% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Olivet Hill
45.9 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
4% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Olivet Hill
40.9 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Olivet Hill sounds about 41% louder than Southern Olivet Hill to the human ear, a 5.0 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 73 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
73 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
60 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
330 ft
53 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
660 ft
45 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
¼ mile
38 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 31% of Olivet Hill sits under tree canopy (about average for cities) and roughly 7% 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 Olivet Hill
The bar chart below shows the share of Olivet Hill 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 Olivet Hill Compares
Olivet Hill sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Olivet Hill's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Sassafras, Massey, Hack Point, and Georgetown.
Average noise level (dBA)
Olivet Hill's 45.6 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. Maryland as a whole averages 52.3 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Olivet Hill because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 3.6% of Olivet Hill 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, 34.6% of Olivet Hill's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Maryland average of 32.9% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Olivet Hill
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 31% of Olivet Hill is under tree cover (about average for cities), and the dominant land cover is low-density developed open space. 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.
