White Bear Lake, MN
How exposed is White Bear Lake to wildfire?
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts White Bear Lake at the 43rd national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 9,819 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks White Bear Lake at the 41st national percentile — 3 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
USFS classifies 83.6% of White Bear Lake's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 14.3% Direct and 2.1% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 9,819 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How White Bear Lake compares
Compare White Bear Lake's two percentiles: 61st within Minnesota, only 43rd nationally — a gap of 18 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, White Bear Lake ranks 17,869 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,655 by building count (1 is largest). Within Minnesota alone, it ranks 359 of 914 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Minnesota on its state page.
White Bear Lake and the insurance market
White Bear Lake's elevated rating (43rd percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 83.6% of White Bear Lake 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 9,819 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for White Bear Lake. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond White Bear Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.