Chilhowee, MO
How exposed is Chilhowee to wildfire?
USFS scores Chilhowee at the 59th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 242 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Chilhowee at the 60th percentile, close to its 59th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Chilhowee's 242 counted buildings, 52.1% carry Direct exposure and only 47.9% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Chilhowee compares
Chilhowee's risk sits at a similar level relative to Missouri (52nd percentile statewide) as it does nationally (59th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Chilhowee ranks 12,983 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,392 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 513 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Chilhowee and the insurance market
Chilhowee'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.
What would actually reduce this score
With 52.1% of Chilhowee 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 Chilhowee's 12,983-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Chilhowee, see the exposure-zones guide.