Mountain Grove, MO
Mountain Grove wildfire risk explained
Out of every US place USFS scores, Mountain Grove lands at the 70th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 2,793 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Mountain Grove's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 72nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 74.5% of Mountain Grove's 2,793 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 16.1% Direct and 9.3% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Mountain Grove against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Mountain Grove's 70th national percentile and its 82nd percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Mountain Grove ranks 9,425 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 5,775 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 187 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
Mountain Grove'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.
Hardening a home in Mountain Grove
Mountain Grove's 74.5% 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
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 2,793 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Mountain Grove. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Mountain Grove, see the exposure-zones guide.