Melbourne Beach, FL
How exposed is Melbourne Beach to wildfire?
USFS scores Melbourne Beach at the 44th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 1,583 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Melbourne Beach at the 51st national percentile — 6 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Melbourne Beach rates 97.6% Minimal exposure against just 2.4% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 1,583 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
How Melbourne Beach compares
Melbourne Beach's 44th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 1st ranking inside Florida does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 43 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Melbourne Beach ranks 17,544 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,819 by building count (1 is largest). Within Florida alone, it ranks 944 of 955 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Florida on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Melbourne Beach's elevated rating (44th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Melbourne Beach's 97.6% 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.
Where Melbourne Beach's figures come from
Melbourne Beach's 44th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Melbourne Beach's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.