Palmer Lake, CO
Palmer Lake wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Palmer Lake at the 99th national percentile for risk to structures, in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — a score built from 1,530 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Palmer Lake's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 99th percentile nationally.
Palmer Lake's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 75.6% of Palmer Lake's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 24.4% Indirect share and far above its 0% Minimal share — a profile where 1,156 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
How Palmer Lake compares
Palmer Lake's risk sits at a similar level relative to Colorado (99th percentile statewide) as it does nationally (99th) — this place isn't unusual for its own state either way. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Palmer Lake ranks 225 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 9,035 by building count (1 is largest). Within Colorado alone, it ranks 3 of 472 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Colorado on its state page.
Palmer Lake and the insurance market
Palmer Lake's 99th-percentile, very 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.
Hardening a home in Palmer Lake
Because Direct exposure dominates in Palmer Lake (75.6%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
Where Palmer Lake's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Palmer Lake's 225-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Palmer Lake's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.