Norton Shores, MI
Norton Shores, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Norton Shores at the 20th national percentile for risk to structures, among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally — a score built from 11,580 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Norton Shores's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 21st percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Norton Shores rates 52.8% Minimal exposure against just 32.2% Direct and 15% Indirect — of 11,580 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually. At 11,580 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Norton Shores against the rest of the country
Compare Norton Shores's two percentiles: 66th within Michigan, only 20th nationally — a gap of 46 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Norton Shores ranks 25,309 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,357 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 256 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Norton Shores's low rating (20th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Hardening a home in Norton Shores
Norton Shores's 52.8% 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 Norton Shores's figures come from
Norton Shores's 20th-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 Norton Shores's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.