Noise Levels in St. Georges, DE | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

53 dBA
Average noise across St. Georges
Quiet office to normal conversation
259
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
22% of St. Georges residents
79 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across St. Georges 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
St. Georges, DE Map of Noise Levels in St. Georges
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 259 St. Georges residents, or 21.6%, live above that level. By land area, 33.4% of St. Georges is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in St. Georges compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of St. Georges

Average noise levels for St. Georges residents, grouped by direction from the center of St. Georges. Central St. Georges carries the highest population-weighted average; Eastern St. Georges carries the lowest. Just 8% of residents in Eastern St. Georges live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Central St. Georges.

Central St. Georges

57.7 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away

67% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Eastern St. Georges

48.4 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office

8% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern St. Georges

53.7 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation

26% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern St. Georges

52.8 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation

18% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Central St. Georges sounds about 91% louder than Eastern St. Georges to the human ear, a 9.3 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 79 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 quiet suburban street at night.

At source
79 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
66 dBA
Busy restaurant
330 ft
58 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
660 ft
51 dBA
Quiet office
¼ mile
43 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall

Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 22% of St. Georges 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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How Noise Is Distributed Across St. Georges

The bar chart below shows the share of St. Georges residents in each noise band. About 76% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 3% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How St. Georges Compares

St. Georges sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how St. Georges's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Delaware City, Newport, Kirkwood, and Odessa.

Average noise level (dBA)

St. Georges's 52.6 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Delaware as a whole averages 53.5 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than St. Georges because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 21.6% of St. Georges 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, 33.4% of St. Georges's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Delaware average of 38.3% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to St. Georges

  • 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 22% of St. Georges 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.

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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