Melrose, MN
How exposed is Melrose to wildfire?
Melrose sits at the 41st percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 1,691 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Melrose at the 40th 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
Melrose rates 84.9% Minimal exposure against just 10.6% Direct and 4.5% Indirect — of 1,691 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Melrose against the rest of the country
Melrose's 56th-percentile standing inside Minnesota outpaces its 41st 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, Melrose ranks 18,623 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,456 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 400 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
Melrose and the insurance market
Melrose's elevated wildfire rating (41st percentile) isn't the kind of score driving the carrier pullback making news in the highest-risk Western markets — but a standard homeowners quote is still worth comparing on its own terms.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
With 84.9% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Melrose gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Melrose's 18,623-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Melrose, see the exposure-zones guide.