Noise Levels in Monolith, CA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
47 dBA
Average noise across Monolith
Quiet office
33
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
11% of Monolith residents
101 dBA
Loudest residential point
Power saw
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Monolith 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 33 Monolith residents, or 10.7%, live above that level. By land area, 14.6% of Monolith is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Monolith residents, grouped by direction from the center of Monolith. Southern Monolith carries the highest population-weighted average; Western Monolith carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Western Monolith live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Southern Monolith.
Eastern Monolith
47.5 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet office
3% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Monolith
33.5 dBA · Quiet
Whisper
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Monolith
62.2 dBA · Loud
Busy restaurant
25% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Monolith
29.6 dBA · Quiet
Whisper
1% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Monolith sounds about 858% louder than Western Monolith to the human ear, a 32.6 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 do you need to be?
produces an estimated 101 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 highway traffic 50 ft away.
At source
101 dBA
Power saw
165 ft
89 dBA
Lawnmower at 1 m
330 ft
81 dBA
Food blender at arm’s length
660 ft
74 dBA
City bus interior
¼ mile
67 dBA
Highway traffic 50 ft away
½ mile
60 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 3% of Monolith sits under tree canopy (much lighter than most cities) and roughly 0% 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 Monolith. 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 Monolith
The bar chart below shows the share of Monolith residents in each noise band. About 75% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 25% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Monolith Compares
Monolith sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how Monolith's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Keene, Edmundson Acres, Mountain Mesa, and Del Sur.
Average noise level (dBA)
Monolith's 46.6 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. California as a whole averages 54.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Monolith because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 10.7% of Monolith 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, 14.6% of Monolith's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a California average of 36.0% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Monolith
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 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 3% of Monolith is under tree cover (much lighter than most cities), and the dominant land cover is shrub / scrub. 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.
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.
