Noise Sensitivity vs Season

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Has anybody else noticed an increased sensitivity to noise in Winter as compared to Summer? I live in a large apartment complex with my apartment located about 300 feet from a busy 4 lane local road. Since childhood I have always been sensitive to the sound of road noise. At age 4, I even experienced instances of synesthesia in which the noise of tires on the road at night and their moving headlights merged into crossed sensations. Now at age 63 traffic outside at night is rather irritating to me (aside from the usual aggressive alphas revving their engines in the driveway to show their ego, especially on Friday nights). But for some reason I have noticed that it seems to have gotten worse over the past two weeks. Of course there is the usual explanation that denser air during cold months conducts sound better and the counter explanation that snow on the ground attenuates sound. (We had a big ice storm two or three years back and traffic stopped dead one night outside at 1 AM, but cars did not turn off their engines. The continuous drone of idling car engines nearly drove me crazy until I went outside and saw cars parked on the road with engines idling. I previously thought that one car was idling in the driveway for two hours).

Last night I think I may have come up with an even simpler explanation. I live in Atlanta (not downtown but not suburbs either... about 7 miles from the center of town) and the leaves on the trees are just beginning to fall to a greater degree than in recent weeks (actually the leaves seem slow to change colors and fall this year... perhaps only about 30% fallen so far). The majority of the large trees in this complex are red maples with large leaves that seem to dampen sound and promote privacy. The thought suddenly struck me that now that the leaves are starting to fall, the leaf cover may no longer be blocking the passage of sound as well as when there was a full leaf cover. I hadn't really noticed this effect that much in past Winters though. On the flip side though, I have noticed for a long time that the leaf cover on the tree outside my window reflects sound from the ground floor apartment two floors below me, so hopefully that will ease up a bit with the advent of colder weather.

I only have mini-blinds on my windows and am thinking of buying some fiberglass cloth to use for window drapes. It might not dampen the sound as well as full drapes, but full drapes are a bit too bulky to suit my tastes. Maybe I can rubberize the cloth so the fiberglass strands will not be such a skin irritant. I found a place on EBay where you can get 62 inch wide fiberglass cloth (wide enough to cover my window) at $100 for 10 sq yds (enough for a double layer drape). I found two companies that sell rubberized fiberglass cloth for use as fire shields, but the price is too high at $40-60 per sq yd, so that looks like a do-it-yourself addition (fairly easy to do though).

Anyhow, has anybody else noticed this same effect of increased sound in Winter?

I am pretty sure that my sensitivity to noise does not change by season. I do get much more sensitive if there is a lot of noise like for example if people drive by my house all day long playing bass on their stereos. So in the summer I warmer months or on warm nice days, I get much more sensitive because there is so much more of it. But it does not change according to season.

Do you have any touch sensitivity?

The reason I ask about touch sensitivity is that when one sensitivity goes up, if its not controlled, then it makes sense for other sensitivities to go up as well. Touch sensitivity in winter goes up for me; I'm not sure about others, but how it does for me makes sense that it would for others.

Winter has dry air, the dryness of the air makes my skin a lot more sensitive to everything.

Because touch is more sensitive, my body is now already on overdrive of dealing with feeling pain from touch.

So, because of that, my body doesn't have the difference between "normal" and "this is bad" to go in sound, because its already done all that in touch. So, this means, sound sensitivity is worse too, because the touch sensitivity is worse.

Thus winter -> worse sound sensitivity.


The leaves are probably a good amount of it too though.

I have noticed that I do have more sensory sensitivity during winter.

I think the explanation by Tuttle seems very reasonable.

I am sure that leaves have a significant effect on the level noise in some situations. But it does not explain everything, like why my car seems noisier while I am driving it.

Also I started looking into sound attenuation (damping). The level of sound absorption is a function of humidity, pressure, temperature, and the frequency of the sound. It seems to me as if, there should be more sound dampening (less noise) during the winter.

Are any audiophiles or acoustic engineers who can explain sound attenuation?