Watauga, TX
Watauga wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Watauga at the 45th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 8,551 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Watauga at the 50th national percentile — 4 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
98.9% of Watauga's 8,551 buildings sit in USFS's Minimal exposure zone, with only 1.1% rated Direct — risk here comes from regional burn probability more than proximity to burnable vegetation at the structure itself. At 8,551 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Watauga ranks
Watauga's 45th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 5th ranking inside Texas does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 41 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Watauga ranks 17,222 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,942 by building count (1 is largest). Within Texas alone, it ranks 1,710 of 1,795 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Texas on its state page.
Watauga and the insurance market
Watauga's elevated rating (45th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 98.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Watauga gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Watauga's 17,222-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Watauga, see the exposure-zones guide.