Lemmon, SD
How exposed is Lemmon to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Lemmon at the 64th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,045 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 Lemmon at the 63rd percentile, close to its 64th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
1,045 buildings are counted in Lemmon, and 89.4% of them are Indirect exposure — ember-driven risk rather than the 10.6% in Direct exposure or the 0% rated Minimal.
How Lemmon compares
There's little gap between Lemmon's 64th national percentile and its 55th percentile inside South Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lemmon ranks 11,290 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 11,627 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 198 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
At the 64th percentile nationally, Lemmon carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
Hardening a home in Lemmon
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Lemmon (89.4% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lemmon's 11,290-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Lemmon, see the exposure-zones guide.