Choptank, MD
How exposed is Choptank to wildfire?
Choptank sits at the 68th 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 99 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 Choptank at the 65th percentile, close to its 68th-percentile risk score.
Where Choptank's buildings actually sit
99 buildings are counted in Choptank, and 79.8% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 6.1% rated Minimal.
Where Choptank ranks
Within Maryland, Choptank ranks higher (92nd percentile) than it does nationally (68th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Choptank ranks 10,083 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,086 by building count (1 is largest). Within Maryland alone, it ranks 44 of 527 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Maryland on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Choptank's 68th-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
Choptank's 79.8% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Choptank's 10,083-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Choptank, see the exposure-zones guide.