Sweet Grass, MT
Sweet Grass wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Sweet Grass at the 27th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 118 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Sweet Grass at the 24th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Sweet Grass's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 71.2% of Sweet Grass's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 28.8% Direct and 0% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one.
Sweet Grass against the rest of the country
Sweet Grass's 27th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 5th ranking inside Montana does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 22 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Sweet Grass ranks 23,168 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 28,258 by building count (1 is largest). Within Montana alone, it ranks 452 of 475 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Montana on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Sweet Grass's moderate wildfire rating (27th 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.
Hardening a home in Sweet Grass
With 71.2% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Sweet Grass gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Sweet Grass's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Sweet Grass's 23,168-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Sweet Grass's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.