Hudson, MA
Hudson, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Hudson at the 35th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 5,108 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 Hudson at the 31st percentile, close to its 35th-percentile risk score.
Hudson's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 76.6% of Hudson's 5,108 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 10.2% Direct and 13.2% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to. At 5,108 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Hudson against the rest of the country
Compare Hudson's two percentiles: 90th within Massachusetts, only 35th nationally — a gap of 55 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Hudson ranks 20,637 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,377 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 26 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Hudson's moderate rating (35th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Hudson (76.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Hudson's 35th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Hudson, see the exposure-zones guide.