Across the places we scored in San Mateo County, overall wildfire risk runs from 5.0 to 70.0, with a middle value of 20.4.
We scored 178 points across San Mateo County on the same 0–100 scale a Satelife address report uses, and they do not land in one place. 30% of them come out High, while 53% are Low. Which end your own parcel sits at is not something a county map can tell you.
FEMA NRI also rates San Mateo County: all-hazards risk Relatively High · social vulnerability Relatively Low · community resilience Very High · annualised wildfire frequency 0.0016.
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 San Mateo County address score?
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Most scored locations fall in the Low tier (95 points), followed by High (54) and Moderate (29). No scored points fall in the Very High tier.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates the county’s wildfire risk as Relatively Moderate, and its expected annual wildfire loss from wildfire as Relatively Moderate.
Since 1984, 2,063 acres have burned in San Mateo County across 28 mapped fire perimeters. That equals 0.4% of the county.
The largest fire named in the county summary is Cloverdale Vmp (2010), at 404 acres, and it is marked as outside the county. The most recent large fire named for the county is Whipple (2023).
Older records also include Lincoln Hill (1962), a 3,236-acre fire marked as partly in the county.
Fire perimeters coloured by decade. Select a perimeter for its name, year and size.
Perimeter sources: NIFC Interagency Fire Perimeter History · largest on record: Cloverdale Vmp 2010. Perimeters are simplified for display; acreage is the figure the source records.
Among larger cities, South San Francisco has a higher typical overall score (24.5) than San Mateo (16.7) and Daly City (13.4).
On the coast and in the hills, several smaller communities score higher, including El Granada (55.6), La Honda (52.6), and Pescadero (41.1).
Some nearby places are much lower, such as Moss Beach at 5.0 and Brisbane at 6.7. That local contrast is important when comparing specific homes.
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.
Fire weather was not measured at all in this county.
Terrain scores are higher around La Honda, where the highest scored terrain value is 65.0, and lower near Pescadero at 5.0.
Vegetation and fuels also vary sharply: the highest scored value is 80.0 in Pescadero, while the lowest is 5.0 near Pescadero. Those differences are associated with the county’s place-to-place wildfire risk variation.
Fire weather was not measured at the sampled points in San Mateo County. The other four indicators on this page were, and the bars below show what they found.
Wildfire risk is not uniform across San Mateo County. In Pescadero, the overall score ranges from 5.0 up to 70.0 in the places we scored.
At the community level, higher typical scores appear in Woodside (57.9), Portola Valley (55.0), and Half Moon Bay (50.0).
Lower typical scores appear in Foster City and Burlingame (both 6.7), with East Palo Alto at 11.7.
Each bar is what one part of the score covers across San Mateo 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 | 5 | 20 | 65 | Pescadero | La Honda | 178 |
| Vegetation & fuels | 5 | 20 | 80 | near Pescadero | Pescadero | 178 |
| Hazard zone | 10 | 10 | 90 | near Pescadero | Pescadero | 178 |
| Fire history | 5 | 5 | 80 | near Pescadero | Pescadero | 178 |
| Composite | 5 | 20.4 | 70 | Pescadero | Pescadero | 178 |
Independently of Satelife's layers, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities grid puts the county's mean annual burn probability at 0.17% (90th percentile cell: 0.36%), with a mean conditional flame length of 1.94 ft. 44% of the 23,374 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 42 of the 178 sampled points — the zones cover Local Responsibility Areas. The USFS grid could not read any of them either, so the hazard weight is renormalised away rather than scored as low.
178 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 90%. Scores are 0–100 and comparable within the county, not across states.
Hazard-zone scores are mostly low in the places we scored, with a middle value of 10.0. The highest scored hazard-zone value reaches 90.0 in Pescadero.
Fire-history scores are also low in many locations (middle value 5.0), but they climb to 80.0 in Pescadero.
A separate countywide model from the U.S. Forest Service reports mean annual burn probability of 0.17% and a 90th-percentile cell value of 0.36%. It also shows 44.2% of the county in areas that can burn.
FEMA’s National Risk Index rates San Mateo County’s wildfire risk as Relatively Moderate and expected annual wildfire loss as Relatively Moderate. In that same index, all-hazards risk is Relatively High, social vulnerability is Relatively Low, and community resilience is Very High.
Find out where your San Mateo 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 42 ZIP areas that touch San Mateo 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.
High 6 ZIPs
Moderate 6 ZIPs
Low 17 ZIPs
No sampled point inside 13 ZIPs
94022 Ladera · 94065 Foster City · 94112 Daly City · 94132 Broadmoor · 94134 Brisbane · 94301 Menlo Park · 94304 Ladera · 94305 Ladera · 94402 San Mateo · 94555 East Palo Alto · 95006 La Honda · 95017 Pescadero · 95033 La Honda
Grouped from 29 of 42 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.
No. The record here shows 2,063 acres burned since 1984, which is 0.4% of the county.
The most recent large fire named for San Mateo County is Whipple (2023).
The county summary names Cloverdale Vmp (2010) as the largest, at 404 acres, and marks it as outside the county.
No. Fire weather was not measured at all in this county.
Higher typical scores include Woodside (57.9) and Portola Valley (55.0). Lower typical scores include Foster City and Burlingame (both 6.7).
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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