Ryegate, MT
How exposed is Ryegate to wildfire?
Out of every US place USFS scores, Ryegate lands at the 63rd percentile for wildfire risk to structures — well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a figure built from its 272 buildings, not the land around them. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ryegate at the 58th national percentile — 4 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Ryegate's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS puts 69.9% of Ryegate's 272 buildings in the Indirect exposure zone, versus 30.2% Direct and 0% Minimal — a place where the fire doesn't need to reach the structure directly for embers to.
Ryegate against the rest of the country
Inside Montana, Ryegate sits at just the 29th percentile even though it scores 63rd 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, Ryegate ranks 11,760 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 22,444 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 337 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Ryegate
Ryegate's high rating (63rd percentile) puts it among the places where the national carrier-pullback trend is most relevant — not a guarantee of a coverage problem, but a reason to shop rather than assume.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Ryegate's 69.9% Indirect-exposure share points at embers, not flame contact, as the main pathway — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing rank ahead of defensible space here. Detail in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Ryegate's 11,760-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Ryegate, see the exposure-zones guide.