Forsyth, MT
Forsyth, MT's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Forsyth at the 87th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 1,436 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Forsyth at the 86th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Forsyth's buildings actually sit
1,436 buildings are counted in Forsyth, and 95.3% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 4.7% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
How Forsyth compares
Inside Montana, Forsyth sits at just the 66th percentile even though it scores 87th 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, Forsyth ranks 4,223 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,452 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 160 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Forsyth's 87th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
Hardening a home in Forsyth
Because 95.3% of Forsyth'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.
Where Forsyth's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Forsyth's 4,223-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Forsyth's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.