Today's air quality in plain language — plus the winter burn rules and where the official numbers live.
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Bakersfield and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
The daily Bakersfield question. This is the modelled, area-wide picture for the city — the same mountain-ringed bowl that traps winter smoke and summer ozone — updated hourly.
Poor If you have asthma or a heart or lung condition, cut back on strenuous time outdoors. Anyone with sore eyes, a cough or a tight chest should take it easier too.
| Day | Air quality |
|---|---|
| Fri 10 Jul | Poor |
| Sat 11 Jul | Poor |
| Sun 12 Jul | Very poor |
| Mon 13 Jul | Very poor |
The American Lung Association's 2025 State of the Air report ranked metro Bakersfield worst in the US for year-round particle pollution for the sixth year running, and third for ozone. The same year, the Valley Air District recorded its cleanest year ever — five unhealthy days valley-wide, against more than a hundred a decade ago. Both are real: the air is dramatically better than it used to be and still worse than nearly everywhere else, because mountains on three sides hold in whatever the valley produces.
Ozone peaks on hot summer afternoons — when the summer index is poor, early morning is usually the better window to be outside. Fine particles are worst in winter stagnation (wood smoke under fog) and during late-summer harvest dust. With about 1 in 6 Kern County children carrying an asthma diagnosis, a lot of families already plan their days around exactly this.
Each winter day the Valley Air District declares a wood-burning status for Kern County: burning discouraged, no burning unless your device is registered, or no burning at all. Burning on a prohibited day draws a fine — historically starting at $100 and climbing for repeats. The daily status has no open data feed, so this page can't show it: check valleyair.org or call 1-800-766-4463 before lighting anything in season.
This page uses the European air-quality index from the Copernicus CAMS model — a fair area-wide picture, but not the US EPA AQI quoted on the news, and not a street monitor. For the official US AQI from local monitors, use AirNow (airnow.gov); for real-time advisories by neighborhood — the system local schools use for recess calls — see the district's myRAAN at valleyair.org.
Updated . These are modelled estimates for the area around central Bakersfield, not readings from a street monitor — air right beside a busy road can be worse than the area-wide picture. Official forecast: airnow.gov. Air quality data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), based on Copernicus CAMS.