Noise Levels in Twin Branch, WV | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

62 dBA
Average noise across Twin Branch
Busy restaurant
3
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
3% of Twin Branch residents
97 dBA
Loudest residential point
Power saw

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Twin Branch 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
Twin Branch, WV Map of Noise Levels in Twin Branch
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 3 Twin Branch residents, or 2.9%, live above that level. By land area, 5.1% of Twin Branch is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in Twin Branch compares to similar-sized cities.

Northern Twin Branch sounds about 0% louder than Southern Twin Branch 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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How far back from Adventure Park Rd do you need to be?

Adventure Park Rd produces an estimated 51 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
51 dBA
Quiet office
165 ft
37 dBA
Soft rainfall
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 75% of Twin Branch sits under tree canopy (much heavier than most cities) and roughly 2% 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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Rail Noise

Active freight rail runs through parts of Twin Branch. For most blocks the rail-only contribution is small. Combined road-plus-rail noise rarely exceeds road noise on its own. The exceptions are the handful of blocks within roughly a quarter mile of the right-of-way during pass-through hours.

Use the Rail toggle on the map above to isolate rail's contribution from road and aviation.

How Noise Is Distributed Across Twin Branch

The bar chart below shows the share of Twin Branch residents in each noise band. About 7% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 78% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How Twin Branch Compares

Twin Branch sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Twin Branch's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Capels, Sun Hill, Roderfield, and Wilmore.

Average noise level (dBA)

Twin Branch's 61.8 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. West Virginia as a whole averages 47.7 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Twin Branch because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 2.9% of Twin Branch 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, 5.1% of Twin Branch's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a West Virginia average of 21.6% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to Twin Branch

  • 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 Adventure Park Rd 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 75% of Twin Branch is under tree cover (much heavier than most cities), and the dominant land cover is deciduous forest. 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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