Sour Lake, TX
Sour Lake, TX's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Sour Lake sits at the 82nd percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,409 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sour Lake at the 84th national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Sour Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
Most of Sour Lake's buildings (64%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Sour Lake ranks
Inside Texas, Sour Lake sits at just the 65th percentile even though it scores 82nd 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, Sour Lake ranks 5,845 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,592 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 633 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Sour Lake
Sour Lake's 82nd-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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 64% of Sour Lake'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
Sour Lake's 82nd-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Sour Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.