Watauga, TN
Watauga, TN's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Watauga lands at the 66th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 256 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Watauga at the 69th national percentile — 4 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Watauga's building exposure, zone by zone
256 buildings are counted in Watauga, and 69.9% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 0% rated Minimal.
Watauga against the rest of the country
Watauga's risk sits at a similar level relative to Tennessee (57th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (66th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Watauga ranks 10,853 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,959 by building count (1 is largest). Within Tennessee alone, it ranks 214 of 502 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Tennessee on its state page.
Watauga and the insurance market
Watauga's 66th-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.
Hardening a home in Watauga
Because Direct exposure dominates in Watauga (69.9%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Watauga's 10,853-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Watauga, see the exposure-zones guide.