Noise Levels in Stone Meadows, Bakersfield, CA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
55 dBA
Average noise across Stone Meadows
Quiet office to normal conversation
2,348
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
49% of Stone Meadows residents
80 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Stone Meadows 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 2,348 Stone Meadows residents, or 48.7%, live above that level. By land area, 48.6% of Stone Meadows is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Stone Meadows residents, grouped by direction from the center of Stone Meadows. Central Stone Meadows carries the highest population-weighted average; Northern Stone Meadows carries the lowest. Just 23% of residents in Northern Stone Meadows live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, about half the share in Central Stone Meadows.
Central Stone Meadows
55.8 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
59% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Stone Meadows
51.9 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
23% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Stone Meadows
53.8 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
44% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Central Stone Meadows sounds about 31% louder than Northern Stone Meadows to the human ear, a 3.9 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 State Rte 99 do you need to be?
State Rte 99 produces an estimated 77 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
77 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
62 dBA
Busy restaurant
330 ft
54 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
660 ft
45 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
¼ mile
37 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 2% of Stone Meadows sits under tree canopy (much lighter than most neighborhoods) and roughly 52% 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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How Noise Is Distributed Across Stone Meadows
The bar chart below shows the share of Stone Meadows residents in each noise band. About 54% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 3% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Stone Meadows Compares
Stone Meadows sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Stone Meadows's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Stonegate, The Seasons, Casa Loma, and Terra Vista.
Average noise level (dBA)
Stone Meadows's 54.6 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. California as a whole averages 54.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Stone Meadows because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 48.7% of Stone Meadows residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's more than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 48.6% of Stone Meadows'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 Stone Meadows
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 State Rte 99 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 2% of Stone Meadows is under tree cover (much lighter than most neighborhoods), and the dominant land cover is medium-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.
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.
