Methow, WA
Methow wildfire risk explained
Methow's 99 buildings earn a 99th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Methow's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 100th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Of Methow's 99 counted buildings, 99% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Methow compares
Methow scores 99th nationally and 97th within Washington — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Methow ranks 362 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 29,108 by building count (1 is largest). Within Washington alone, it ranks 20 of 628 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Washington on its state page.
Methow and the insurance market
Methow's 99th-percentile, very 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.
Hardening a home in Methow
Because Direct exposure dominates in Methow (99%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Methow's 362-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Methow, see the exposure-zones guide.