Cannon Ball, ND
How exposed is Cannon Ball to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Cannon Ball at the 83rd national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 536 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Cannon Ball at the 82nd percentile, close to its 83rd-percentile risk score.
Where Cannon Ball's buildings actually sit
Direct exposure dominates in Cannon Ball: 82.3% of its 536 buildings, versus 17.7% Indirect and 0% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap.
Cannon Ball against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Cannon Ball's 83rd national percentile and its 96th percentile inside North Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Cannon Ball ranks 5,240 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 16,788 by building count (1 is largest). Within North Dakota alone, it ranks 17 of 402 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for North Dakota on its state page.
Cannon Ball and the insurance market
Cannon Ball's very high rating (83rd 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
Because Direct exposure dominates in Cannon Ball (82.3%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Cannon Ball's 5,240-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Cannon Ball, see the exposure-zones guide.