Wildfire risk in Merced County varies a lot by location. Across the places we scored, the overall scores run from 17.5 in Los Banos to 71.9 near Gustine, with a middle value of 29.4.
We scored 163 points across Merced County on the same 0–100 scale a Satelife address report uses, and they do not land in one place. 20% of them come out High, while 36% are Low. Which end your own parcel sits at is not something a county map can tell you.
FEMA NRI also rates Merced County: all-hazards risk Relatively High · social vulnerability Relatively High · community resilience Very Low · annualised wildfire frequency 0.0052.
Sources: FEMA National Risk Index 1.20.0 (Dec 2025), county record · USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0, mean of the grid cells inside the county. Both describe the county as a whole, never an address in it.
What does your Merced County address score?
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Most scored locations fall in the Moderate tier. 72 points are Moderate, and none of the scored points are in the Very High tier.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Merced County’s wildfire risk as “Relatively Moderate.” In the same FEMA index, the county’s all-hazards risk is rated “Relatively High.”
The largest fire listed here is the Mercy fire in 1996, at 23,526 acres. The most recent large fire is Hwy 59 N/ La Grange Rd in 2026.
Since 1984, fire perimeters in the county add up to 95,243 acres, and 7.6% of the county has burned in that period. There have been 113 fire perimeters since 1984.
Other named fires in this county record include Planada (2018) and Pass (2020), showing that both older and more recent incidents are part of the local fire history.
Fire perimeters coloured by decade. Select a perimeter for its name, year and size.
Perimeter sources: NIFC Interagency Fire Perimeter History · WFIGS Interagency Perimeters · largest on record: Mercy 1996. Perimeters are simplified for display; acreage is the figure the source records.
For larger population centers, the middle scores are fairly close: Los Banos is 25.5, Atwater is 25.4, and Merced is 22.6. That points to generally low-to-moderate differences among the county’s biggest cities and towns.
Smaller communities also span a range. Hilmar is at 26.6, while Dos Palos is at 17.5, with places like Planada at 24.1 and South Dos Palos at 21.8 between those ends.
The score is the median of the sampled points nearest that community — a community-scale indicator, not a score for any individual property in it. Population comes from the community's own record where the source carries one.
Terrain scores are generally on the lower side in much of the county, with a middle value of 20.0. But terrain reaches 65.0 near Los Banos, so slope-related exposure is higher in some locations.
Vegetation and fuels vary more. That score ranges from 5.0 near Los Banos up to 77.7 near South Dos Palos, with a middle value of 46.0. In practical terms, fuel patterns contribute to bigger place-to-place swings in wildfire risk than terrain alone in this county.
Fire weather was measured across the county, and it is fairly tight compared with some other factors. Scores run from 53.3 near Los Banos to 63.0 near Gustine, with a middle value of 54.9.
A separate USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities model estimates a mean annual burn probability of 0.68%, and a 90th-percentile cell value of 1.65%. It also indicates that 83.1% of the county has some potential to burn.
Risk is not evenly spread across Merced County. The highest overall score appears near Gustine at 71.9, while the lowest is in Los Banos at 17.5.
Among named communities, Hilmar has one of the higher middle scores at 26.6, while Dos Palos is lower at 17.5. Merced sits in between at 22.6, which shows why neighborhood-level differences matter even inside one county.
Each bar is what one part of the score covers across Merced County, on the same 0–100 scale. A long bar is a part of the risk that depends on where you are; a short one is the same almost everywhere.
The tick on each bar is the middle value. Tier boundaries — Moderate at 25, High at 50, Very High at 75 — are the faint lines behind them.
| Layer | Min | Median | Max | Lowest place | Highest place | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrain | 20 | 20 | 65 | near South Dos Palos | near Los Banos | 163 |
| Vegetation & fuels | 5 | 46 | 77.7 | near Los Banos | near South Dos Palos | 163 |
| Hazard zone | 10 | 10 | 90 | near South Dos Palos | near Los Banos | 163 |
| Fire history | 5 | 5 | 95 | near Los Banos | near Gustine | 163 |
| Fire weather | 53.3 | 54.9 | 63 | near Los Banos | near Gustine | 163 |
| Composite | 17.5 | 29.4 | 71.9 | Los Banos | near Gustine | 163 |
Independently of Satelife's layers, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities grid puts the county's mean annual burn probability at 0.68% (90th percentile cell: 1.65%), with a mean conditional flame length of 3.22 ft. 83% of the 19,479 grid cells inside the county carry burnable fuel at all.
Source: USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities v2.0 (ImageServer, county extent).
CAL FIRE has no mapped Fire Hazard Severity Zone at 7 of the 163 sampled points — the zones cover Local Responsibility Areas. At 7 of them the USFS grid above supplied the hazard reading instead.
163 sample points on a ~2.3 km grid, plus one at the centre of each community, weighted with the Satelife county profile v1 · median layer coverage 100%. Scores are 0–100 and comparable within the county, not across states.
Hazard-zone scores are low in many scored locations, with a middle value of 10.0, but they reach 90.0 near Los Banos. So hazard-zone exposure can be very different from one part of the county to another.
Fire-history scores show a similar pattern: many places are at 5.0, while the high end reaches 95.0 near Gustine. For a specific home, nearby location inside the county is strongly associated with the risk picture.
FEMA’s National Risk Index also rates Merced County’s expected annual loss from wildfire as “Relatively Moderate,” social vulnerability as “Relatively High,” and community resilience as “Very Low.”
Find out where your Merced County parcel sits
Slope, the fuel touching the structure, the road out, the fire history within a mile — measured at your address, not averaged across the county.
Free to request · PDF report with a 0–100 score, the drivers behind it, and a mitigation plan
Every one of the 32 ZIP areas that touch Merced County — we run address-level reports in all of them. They are grouped by the median score of the points we sampled inside each, which is a neighbourhood-scale indicator and not a score for any property: two homes in the same ZIP routinely land in different tiers.
Moderate 13 ZIPs
Low 11 ZIPs
No sampled point inside 8 ZIPs
93653 Le Grand · 95023 · 95075 · 95306 Le Grand · 95312 Winton · 95325 Planada · 95329 Winton · 95338 Planada
Grouped from 24 of 32 ZIP areas — the rest had no sample point fall inside them. The community shown is the nearest mapped place to the ZIP's centre.
ZIP areas are Census 2020 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas intersecting the county boundary.
Scores run from 0 to 100, and higher scores mean higher wildfire exposure at that location.
No. The scored locations range from 17.5 to 71.9, so risk varies substantially by location.
The largest listed fire is Mercy (1996), at 23,526 acres.
The most recent large fire is Hwy 59 N/ La Grange Rd (2026).
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Merced County’s wildfire risk as “Relatively Moderate.”
A county range shows the spread. An address-level Satelife report shows where in that spread your property actually sits — PDF, per-layer score, and a prioritized mitigation plan.
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