Tupelo, MS
Tupelo, MS's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Tupelo lands at the 57th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 17,188 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Tupelo at the 60th percentile, close to its 57th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Tupelo rates 50.7% Minimal exposure against just 32.8% Direct and 16.5% Indirect — of 17,188 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 17,188 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Tupelo against the rest of the country
Inside Mississippi, Tupelo sits at just the 27th percentile even though it scores 57th 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, Tupelo ranks 13,672 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 839 by building count (1 is largest). Within Mississippi alone, it ranks 307 of 420 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Mississippi on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Tupelo's elevated rating (57th 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
Even with 50.7% of Tupelo outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
Where Tupelo's figures come from
Tupelo's 57th-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 Tupelo's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.