Aberdeen, SD
Aberdeen, SD's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Aberdeen at the 67th national percentile for risk to structures, well above the national norm for wildfire risk — a score built from 12,295 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Aberdeen at the 66th national percentile — 1 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
Only 11.9% of Aberdeen's 12,295 buildings carry Direct exposure and 3.3% carry Indirect; the remaining 84.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 12,295 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Aberdeen compares
There's little gap between Aberdeen's 67th national percentile and its 61st percentile inside South Dakota, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Aberdeen ranks 10,441 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,258 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 171 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Aberdeen and the insurance market
At the 67th percentile nationally, Aberdeen carries the high rating that has pushed some carriers to limit new business in similarly-scored places elsewhere in the country. Worth comparing quotes rather than assuming last year's renewal terms still apply.
What would actually reduce this score
With 84.8% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Aberdeen gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
Where Aberdeen's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Aberdeen's 10,441-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Aberdeen's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.