Blythedale, MO
How exposed is Blythedale to wildfire?
Blythedale sits at the 73rd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 184 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Blythedale at the 74th percentile, close to its 73rd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
55.4% of Blythedale's 184 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 102 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 44.6% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 0% are Minimal.
Blythedale against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Blythedale's 73rd national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Blythedale ranks 8,636 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,468 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 137 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Blythedale
Blythedale's 73rd-percentile, high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With 55.4% of Blythedale in Direct exposure, defensible-space clearing and ember-resistant construction (vents, Class-A roofing) address the exposure this page's own numbers describe, not a generic checklist. See the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Blythedale's 8,636-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Blythedale, see the exposure-zones guide.