Medicine Lake, MT
How exposed is Medicine Lake to wildfire?
Medicine Lake's 286 buildings earn a 67th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — well above the national norm for wildfire risk. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Medicine Lake at the 66th national percentile — 1 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Medicine Lake's buildings (91.6%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
How Medicine Lake compares
Medicine Lake ranks lower within Montana (35th percentile statewide) than its 67th national percentile suggests alone — a calmer spot in a state where wildfire risk generally runs high. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Medicine Lake ranks 10,275 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,012 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 307 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Medicine Lake and the insurance market
Medicine Lake's 67th-percentile, 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Medicine Lake's 91.6% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Medicine Lake's 67th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Medicine Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.