Bow Valley, NE
How exposed is Bow Valley to wildfire?
Bow Valley sits at the 59th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 94 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 Bow Valley at the 52nd percentile, close to its 59th-percentile risk score.
Where Bow Valley's buildings actually sit
Of Bow Valley's 94 counted buildings, 66% carry Direct exposure and only 34% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Bow Valley ranks
There's little gap between Bow Valley's 59th national percentile and its 49th percentile inside Nebraska, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bow Valley ranks 12,895 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,323 by building count (1 is largest). Within Nebraska alone, it ranks 298 of 583 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Nebraska on its state page.
Bow Valley and the insurance market
Bow Valley's elevated wildfire rating (59th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Hardening a home in Bow Valley
Because Direct exposure dominates in Bow Valley (66%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Bow Valley's 59th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Bow Valley, see the exposure-zones guide.