Baraboo, WI
Baraboo wildfire risk explained
Baraboo sits at the 29th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 5,343 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Baraboo at the 31st national percentile — 1 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Baraboo's building exposure, zone by zone
USFS classifies 85.6% of Baraboo's buildings as Minimal exposure, the largest of the three zones here by a wide margin over 10.6% Direct and 3.7% Indirect — a landscape-level risk rather than a building-by-building one. At 5,343 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Baraboo compares
Within Wisconsin, Baraboo ranks higher (62nd percentile) than it does nationally (29th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Baraboo ranks 22,330 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,228 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 304 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
What this risk score means for insurance
Baraboo's moderate wildfire rating (29th 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.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 85.6% of Baraboo 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.
Where Baraboo's figures come from
Baraboo's 29th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Baraboo's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.