Circle, MT
Circle wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Circle at the 66th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 593 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Circle's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 65th percentile nationally.
Circle's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 92.6% of Circle's 593 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 7.4% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Circle against the rest of the country
Inside Montana, Circle sits at just the 34th percentile even though it scores 66th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Circle ranks 10,625 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 15,929 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 315 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Circle
Circle's high rating (66th 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.
Hardening a home in Circle
Because 92.6% of Circle's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Circle's 66th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Circle, see the exposure-zones guide.