Tornado, WV
Tornado, WV's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Tornado lands at the 70th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 661 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Tornado at the 73rd national percentile — 3 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Tornado: 62.9% of its 661 buildings, versus 37.1% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Tornado against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Tornado's 70th national percentile and its 64th percentile inside West Virginia, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Tornado ranks 9,566 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,055 by building count (1 is largest). Within West Virginia alone, it ranks 157 of 429 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for West Virginia on its state page.
Tornado and the insurance market
Tornado'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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Tornado's 62.9% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Tornado's 9,566-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Tornado, see the exposure-zones guide.