Blacktail, ND
How exposed is Blacktail to wildfire?
USFS scores Blacktail at the 43rd national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 163 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Blacktail at the 40th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Blacktail's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 71.2% of Blacktail's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 28.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
How Blacktail compares
Blacktail's risk sits at a similar level relative to North Dakota (31st percentile statewide) as it does nationally (43rd) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Blacktail ranks 18,126 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 26,295 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 278 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Blacktail and the insurance market
Blacktail's elevated rating (43rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Blacktail's 71.2% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Blacktail's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 163 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Blacktail. The exposure-zones guide covers what Blacktail's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.