This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Tar Heel 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.
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 53 Tar Heel residents, or 3.8%, live above that level. By land area, 8.9% of Tar Heel is above 55 dBA.
See how noise in Tar Heel compares to similar-sized cities.
Noise by Part of Tar Heel
Average noise levels for Tar Heel residents, grouped by direction from the center of Tar Heel. Eastern Tar Heel carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Tar Heel carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Southern Tar Heel live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Eastern Tar Heel.
Eastern Tar Heel
10% of people above 55 dBA
Northern Tar Heel
2% of people above 55 dBA
Southern Tar Heel
1% of people above 55 dBA
Western Tar Heel
1% of people above 55 dBA
Eastern Tar Heel sounds about 71% louder than Southern Tar Heel to the human ear, a 7.7 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.
Loudest Road Corridors
The model evaluates every road in Tar Heel 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.
How far back from Nc-87 do you need to be?
Nc-87 produces an estimated 66 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.
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 42% of Tar Heel sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 3% 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 Tar Heel
The bar chart below shows the share of Tar Heel residents in each noise band. About 99% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 1% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Tar Heel Compares
Tar Heel sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Tar Heel's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Tolarsville, White Oak, Vander, and Rennert.
Average noise level (dBA)
Tar Heel's 41.7 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. North Carolina as a whole averages 49.7 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Tar Heel because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 3.8% of Tar Heel 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, 8.9% of Tar Heel's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a North Carolina average of 22.6% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Tar Heel
- 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 Nc-87 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 42% of Tar Heel is under tree cover (heavier 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.
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.