Neosho, MO
Neosho wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Neosho at the 73rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 5,503 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Neosho's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 74th percentile nationally.
Neosho's building exposure, zone by zone
49.4% of Neosho's 5,503 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 33.2% Direct and 17.4% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone. At 5,503 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Neosho against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Neosho's 73rd national percentile and its 88th percentile inside Missouri, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Neosho ranks 8,610 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,132 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 135 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Neosho and the insurance market
Neosho's 73rd-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
Neosho's 49.4% 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.
Where Neosho's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Neosho's 8,610-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Neosho's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.