Lake Elmo, MN
How exposed is Lake Elmo to wildfire?
Lake Elmo's 5,175 buildings earn a 35th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Lake Elmo's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 36th percentile nationally.
Lake Elmo's building exposure, zone by zone
Direct exposure dominates in Lake Elmo: 60.6% of its 5,175 buildings, versus 15.6% Indirect and 23.8% Minimal. Clearing space around a structure changes the outcome here more than any single building-material swap. At 5,175 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Lake Elmo against the rest of the country
Lake Elmo's risk sits at a similar level relative to Minnesota (44th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (35th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lake Elmo ranks 20,575 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,329 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 512 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Lake Elmo
At the 35th national percentile, Lake Elmo rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Hardening a home in Lake Elmo
Lake Elmo's 60.6% 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.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lake Elmo's 20,575-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Lake Elmo, see the exposure-zones guide.