Old Appleton, MO
Old Appleton, MO's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Old Appleton at the 42nd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 67 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Old Appleton at the 44th percentile, close to its 42nd-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
USFS puts 67.2% of Old Appleton's 67 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 32.8% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
How Old Appleton compares
Inside Missouri, Old Appleton sits at just the 17th percentile even though it scores 42nd nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Old Appleton ranks 18,373 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 30,387 by building count (1 is largest). Within Missouri alone, it ranks 886 of 1,062 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Missouri on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Old Appleton
Old Appleton's elevated rating (42nd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Old Appleton's 67.2% 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Old Appleton's 18,373-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Old Appleton, see the exposure-zones guide.