Melissa, TX
Melissa wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Melissa at the 70th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 4,893 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Melissa at the 70th national percentile — 0 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Melissa's building exposure, zone by zone
4,893 buildings are counted in Melissa, and 58.7% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 25.8% in Direct exposure or the 15.5% rated Minimal.
Melissa against the rest of the country
Melissa's 70th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 31st ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 39 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Melissa ranks 9,501 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,499 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,245 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Melissa and the insurance market
Melissa's 70th-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
Because 58.7% of Melissa's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 4,893 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Melissa. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Melissa, see the exposure-zones guide.