Bull Lake, MT
Bull Lake wildfire risk explained
Bull Lake's 301 buildings earn a 95th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Bull Lake at the 91st national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Direct exposure dominates in Bull Lake: 93.7% of its 301 buildings, versus 1% Indirect and 5.3% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Where Bull Lake ranks
There's little gap between Bull Lake's 95th national percentile and its 87th percentile inside Montana, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bull Lake ranks 1,730 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,603 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 62 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Bull Lake
Bull Lake's very high rating (95th percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Bull Lake's 93.7% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Bull Lake's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Bull Lake's 1,730-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Bull Lake's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.