Winterhaven, CA
Winterhaven, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Out of every US place USFS scores, Winterhaven lands at the 38th percentile for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — a figure built from its 194 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 Winterhaven at the 36th percentile, close to its 38th-percentile risk score.
Winterhaven's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 11.9% of Winterhaven's 194 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 88.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure.
How Winterhaven compares
Winterhaven's 38th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 5th ranking inside California does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 33 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Winterhaven ranks 19,499 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,057 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,487 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Winterhaven sits in California, one of two states that legally require a wildfire-risk disclosure at sale. California's FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, ended 2025 with 668,609 residential policies after adding 21,859 in Q4 alone — the kind of market shift a 38th-percentile score like Winterhaven's can end up mattering for. More on the disclosure law.
Hardening a home in Winterhaven
With 88.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Winterhaven 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
Winterhaven's 38th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Winterhaven, see the exposure-zones guide.