Cowgill, MO
Cowgill wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Cowgill at the 61st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 148 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Cowgill at the 61st national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Cowgill's buildings actually sit
69.6% of Cowgill's 148 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 30.4% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself.
How Cowgill compares
Cowgill's risk sits at a similar level relative to Missouri (58th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (61st) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cowgill ranks 12,416 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,957 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 451 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Cowgill
Cowgill's 61st-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 69.6% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Cowgill gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Cowgill's figures come from
Cowgill's 61st-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Cowgill's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.