Montrose, CO
How exposed is Montrose to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Montrose at the 48th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 9,884 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Montrose at the 47th 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 Montrose's buildings (57.9% of 9,884) 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 9,884 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Montrose compares
Inside Colorado, Montrose sits at just the 14th percentile even though it scores 48th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Montrose ranks 16,502 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,639 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 405 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Montrose's elevated rating (48th 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
Even with 57.9% of Montrose outside USFS's Direct and Indirect zones, basic hardening — gutter maintenance, ember-resistant vents — is inexpensive relative to the regional burn-probability risk noted above. Details in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,884 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Montrose. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Montrose, see the exposure-zones guide.