Hughson, CA
How exposed is Hughson to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Hughson lands at the 88th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a figure built from its 2,580 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Hughson's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 88th percentile nationally.
Where Hughson's buildings actually sit
USFS puts 80.3% of Hughson's 2,580 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 8.2% Direct and 11.5% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Where Hughson ranks
Inside California, Hughson sits at just the 56th percentile even though it scores 88th 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, Hughson ranks 3,899 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 6,137 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 693 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Hughson and the insurance market
Because Hughson is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
What would actually reduce this score
Hughson's 80.3% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hughson's 3,899-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Hughson, see the exposure-zones guide.