Wildfire risk in Sutter County spans a wide range across the places we scored: from 13.4 in Live Oak up to 75.9 in Sutter, with a county midpoint of 21.0. That means risk is not uniform from one part of the county to another.
We scored 153 points across Sutter County on the same 0–100 scale a Satelife address report uses, and they do not land in one place. 1% of them come out Very High, while 66% are Low. Which end your own parcel sits at is not something a county map can tell you.
FEMA NRI also rates Sutter County: all-hazards risk Relatively Moderate · social vulnerability Relatively Moderate · community resilience Relatively Moderate · annualised wildfire frequency 0.0035.
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 Sutter County address score?
A county range shows the spread. Your parcel sits somewhere inside it — the report says where, and what to do about it.
Free to request · PDF report with a 0–100 score, the drivers behind it, and a mitigation plan
Most scored locations fell in the Low tier (101 points), followed by Moderate (38) and High (12). Only 2 points were in the Very High tier, so the highest-risk conditions are present but limited to relatively few locations.
For a county-wide outside benchmark, FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Sutter County’s wildfire risk as Relatively Low. FEMA also rates the county’s all-hazards risk as Relatively Moderate.
Since 1984, 3,911 acres have burned within mapped fire perimeters in Sutter County, and that equals 1% of the county. There have been 15 mapped fire perimeters in that period.
The largest fire listed here is Butte (2018) at 1,238 acres, and it is also the most recent large fire.
Other named fires in the county record include West Butte (2019), which burned 648 acres.
Fire perimeters coloured by decade. Select a perimeter for its name, year and size.
Perimeter sources: NIFC Interagency Fire Perimeter History · largest on record: Butte 2018. Perimeters are simplified for display; acreage is the figure the source records.
In the hazard-zone measure, scored locations range from 10.0 in unincorporated Sutter County up to 90.0 in Sutter. The midpoint is 10.0, which shows many locations scoring near the low end with some much higher pockets.
In the fire-history measure, scores range from 5.0 in unincorporated Sutter County up to 90.0 in Yuba City, with a midpoint of 5.0. That pattern points to mostly low historical fire-impact scores, alongside a smaller number of places with much higher past-fire exposure.
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-related risk is generally low to moderate in the places we scored. Terrain values sit at 20.0 in many locations and reach 40.0 at Sutter.
Vegetation and fuels vary more. The lowest value is 20.0 in Yuba City, while the highest is 70.0 near Live Oak, with a midpoint of 40.0.
Fire weather was not measured at all in this county results set.
Fire weather was not measured at the sampled points in Sutter County. The other four indicators on this page were, and the bars below show what they found.
At the community level, the typical scored risk is higher in Yuba City (30.0) than in Sutter (26.6) and Live Oak (22.1). Those differences are meaningful for buyers and owners comparing neighborhoods.
Looking at the full spread of scored locations, the highest score appears in Sutter at 75.9, while the lowest appears in Live Oak at 13.4. So even within one county, conditions can vary a lot by location.
Each bar is what one part of the score covers across Sutter 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 | 40 | unincorporated Sutter County | Sutter | 153 |
| Vegetation & fuels | 20 | 40 | 70 | Yuba City | near Live Oak | 153 |
| Hazard zone | 10 | 10 | 90 | unincorporated Sutter County | Sutter | 153 |
| Fire history | 5 | 5 | 90 | unincorporated Sutter County | Yuba City | 153 |
| Composite | 13.4 | 21 | 75.9 | Live Oak | Sutter | 153 |
Independently of Satelife's layers, the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities grid puts the county's mean annual burn probability at 0.33% (90th percentile cell: 0.94%), with a mean conditional flame length of 2.64 ft. 63% of the 21,535 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 1 of the 153 sampled points — the zones cover Local Responsibility Areas. At 1 of them the USFS grid above supplied the hazard reading instead.
153 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.
A separate national wildfire model from the U.S. Forest Service reports a mean annual burn probability of 0.33% for Sutter County, and a 90th-percentile cell value of 0.94%. It also indicates that 63.2% of county area is in places that can burn.
That same model reports mean conditional flame length of 2.64 feet. For county-wide risk framing, FEMA’s National Risk Index rates Sutter County’s wildfire expected annual loss as Relatively Low, with social vulnerability and community resilience both rated Relatively Moderate.
Find out where your Sutter 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 22 ZIP areas that touch Sutter 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 1 ZIP
Moderate 3 ZIPs
Low 7 ZIPs
No sampled point inside 11 ZIPs
95648 Yuba City · 95676 Yuba City · 95691 · 95692 Yuba City · 95776 · 95901 Yuba City · 95932 Sutter · 95948 Live Oak · 95950 Sutter · 95961 Yuba City · 95965 Live Oak
Grouped from 11 of 22 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.
Butte (2018) is the largest listed fire at 1,238 acres. It is also identified as the most recent large fire.
No. In the places scored, values run from 13.4 (Live Oak) to 75.9 (Sutter), so risk varies by location.
Low is the most common tier, with 101 scored points. Moderate has 38, High has 12, and Very High has 2.
No. Fire weather was not measured at all in this county results set.
The U.S. Forest Service model reports 0.33% as mean annual burn probability and 0.94% at the 90th-percentile cell. Those are model outputs for burn probability, not a fire-weather rating.
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.
Start with your address →