Dalton, MO
Dalton wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Dalton lands at the 40th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 72 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Dalton at the 41st percentile, close to its 40th-percentile risk score.
Where Dalton's buildings actually sit
56.9% of Dalton's 72 buildings sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone, roughly 41 structures close enough to burnable vegetation for flame contact, not just embers — 0% fall in the Indirect, ember-only zone and 43.1% are Minimal.
Where Dalton ranks
Inside Missouri, Dalton sits at just the 15th percentile even though it scores 40th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Dalton ranks 18,972 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,208 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 907 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Dalton's moderate wildfire rating (40th 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 Dalton
Dalton's 56.9% 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 Dalton's 18,972-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Dalton, see the exposure-zones guide.