Winchester, MA
Winchester, MA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Winchester at the 27th national percentile for risk to structures, close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a score built from 7,705 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Winchester at the 21st percentile, close to its 27th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Winchester's buildings (53%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone. At 7,705 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Winchester compares
Within Massachusetts, Winchester ranks higher (56th percentile) than it does nationally (27th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Winchester ranks 23,103 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,211 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 111 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Winchester's moderate rating (27th 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
Winchester's 53% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
Where Winchester's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 7,705 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Winchester. The exposure-zones guide covers what Winchester's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.