Hysham, MT
How exposed is Hysham to wildfire?
Hysham sits at the 46th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 313 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Hysham's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 44th percentile nationally.
Hysham's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 95.5% of Hysham's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 4.5% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Hysham against the rest of the country
Inside Montana, Hysham sits at just the 10th percentile even though it scores 46th 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, Hysham ranks 17,177 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,285 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 429 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Hysham and the insurance market
Hysham's elevated wildfire rating (46th percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
What would actually reduce this score
With 95.5% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Hysham gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Hysham's 17,177-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Hysham, see the exposure-zones guide.