Depending upon where you live and the time of year, the landscaping, and the density of your neighborhood, you will in all likelihood hear yard noise year round, or through most of the year, from landscapers mowing lawns, leaf blowers, power saws, lawn edgers, snow blowers, and various other instruments. The amount of noise that these devices can generate, depends upon how they are powered, the manufacturer, their physical size, their engine size, their overall power efficiency, and so on, but basically those devices that are fueled by some sort of gasoline combination, emit the most noise, in which, that noise can easily reach 100 decibels, and possibly more. Not too surprisingly, the operators of this equipment are almost always prudent enough to wear ear plugs or ear protection devices in order to protect their ears. However, for those that live in that neighborhood or in the area where the work is being conducted, the noise level heard for them is often both loud as well as annoying, even with windows closed, and with windows open, under many circumstances, intolerable.
That said, out of all the equipment, being used, the most intolerable of them all, is leaf blowers. The thing about lawn mowers is that lawns do not move, so a lawn being mowed is just going to be that physical location of that lawn, as well as the same condition applies to tree removal and its work. The thing about leafs, is that they go everywhere all over a given person's property and then some, in addition to the fact that the operators of the leaf blowers make it a point to try to conduct and direct leafs into one or a couple of piles in order to collect them or to push them off to a given side, therefore a leaf blower is not only loud, annoying, and irksome, but also continues for a long, long time, and seemingly over every square inch of the subject property.
While one understands the necessity of a power saw in order to take down a powerful tree or thick branches, and one understands the need for a power mower to mow lawn, because that gas powered mower is just going to be a world of magnitude faster and more efficient that one powered by hand, or typically one powered by electricity. On the other hand, leafs really don't weigh much of anything at all, and while there may be leafs all over the place, leaf blowers seem like overkill or just plain laziness in the collecting of such. Undoubtedly, leaf blowers are effective because of the power generated from such, but this power is so high, that it also lifts up top soil, animal waste, herbicides, pesticides, and just basically anything in its path, which is all included with the blowing and the collectingof the actual leafs.
The thing about the current design of gasoline powered leaf blowers is that they are way too powerful for the job at hand and either need to be redesigned as a tool that is both less noisy as well as less invasive and destructive or, if not, be reduced to a minimum in usage. The fact of the matter is that rakes do a commendable job of aiding in the moving and collecting of leafs, to which, leaf blowers should be seen more as an adjunct to raking, not as its replacement.