Noise Levels in Victory Hills, Albuquerque, NM | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
54 dBA
Average noise across Victory Hills
Quiet office to normal conversation
1,762
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
47% of Victory Hills residents
65 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Victory Hills 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 1,762 Victory Hills residents, or 46.8%, live above that level. By land area, 70.9% of Victory Hills is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Victory Hills residents, grouped by direction from the center of Victory Hills. Southern Victory Hills carries the highest population-weighted average; Western Victory Hills carries the lowest. Just 33% of residents in Western Victory Hills live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, about two-thirds of the share in Southern Victory Hills.
Central Victory Hills
53.8 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
44% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Victory Hills
54.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
48% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Victory Hills
55.6 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
60% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Victory Hills
52.7 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
33% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Victory Hills sounds about 22% louder than Western Victory Hills to the human ear, a 2.9 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 Columbia Dr SE do you need to be?
Columbia Dr SE produces an estimated 55 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
55 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
165 ft
41 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 5% of Victory Hills sits under tree canopy (lighter than most neighborhoods) and roughly 31% 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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Airport Noise
Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) sits south of Victory Hills. The U.S. Department of Transportation models aviation noise around this airport from federal traffic data, 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 50 dBA on the map's Overall layer. Blocks on the opposite side of Victory Hills, particularly to the north, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Victory Hills
The bar chart below shows the share of Victory Hills residents in each noise band. About 62% 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 Victory Hills Compares
Victory Hills sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Victory Hills's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Kirtland Community, Downtown, Uptown, and South Los Altos.
Average noise level (dBA)
Victory Hills's 54.1 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. New Mexico as a whole averages 51.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Victory Hills because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 46.8% of Victory Hills 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, 70.9% of Victory Hills's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a New Mexico average of 19.5% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Victory Hills
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 Columbia Dr SE 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 5% of Victory Hills is under tree cover (lighter than most neighborhoods), 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. Albuquerque International Sunport's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the south. Neighborhoods to the north 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.
