Thermopolis, WY
How exposed is Thermopolis to wildfire?
USFS scores Thermopolis at the 74th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 2,087 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Thermopolis at the 70th percentile, close to its 74th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
95.8% of Thermopolis's 2,087 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 4.2% Direct and 0% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Thermopolis compares
Inside Wyoming, Thermopolis sits at just the 36th percentile even though it scores 74th 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, Thermopolis ranks 8,117 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 7,231 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wyoming alone, it ranks 123 of 192 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wyoming on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Thermopolis's 74th-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
Because 95.8% of Thermopolis'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.
Where Thermopolis's figures come from
Thermopolis's 74th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Thermopolis's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.