Lake Timberline, MO
Lake Timberline wildfire risk explained
Lake Timberline sits at the 63rd 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 638 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 Lake Timberline at the 65th percentile, close to its 63rd-percentile risk score.
Where Lake Timberline's buildings actually sit
Of Lake Timberline's 638 counted buildings, 99.1% carry Direct exposure and only 0.6% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
Where Lake Timberline ranks
There's little gap between Lake Timberline's 63rd national percentile and its 62nd percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Timberline ranks 11,757 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,362 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 399 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
Lake Timberline's 63rd-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
Lake Timberline's 99.1% 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.
Where Lake Timberline's figures come from
Lake Timberline's 63rd-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 Lake Timberline's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.