Lexington, MA
Lexington wildfire risk explained
Lexington sits at the 30th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 11,667 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Lexington at the 27th percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Where Lexington's buildings actually sit
Most of Lexington's buildings (80.4% of 11,667) fall outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones entirely — that doesn't zero out the score above, it means the risk is regional, not structure-by-structure. At 11,667 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Where Lexington ranks
Lexington's 79th-percentile standing inside Massachusetts outpaces its 30th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Lexington ranks 21,994 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,346 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 54 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Lexington and the insurance market
At the 30th national percentile, Lexington rates moderate for wildfire risk — well short of the threshold where insurers have been withdrawing coverage, though comparing a quote costs nothing either way.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Lexington's 80.4% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Lexington's 21,994-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Lexington, see the exposure-zones guide.