Bay City, WI
Bay City wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Bay City at the 24th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 314 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Bay City at the 24th percentile, close to its 24th-percentile risk score.
Where Bay City's buildings actually sit
314 buildings are counted in Bay City, and 53.2% of them sit in USFS's Direct exposure zone — flame contact, not just ember cast, is the live possibility for most of them, against 2.9% rated Minimal.
How Bay City compares
Compare Bay City's two percentiles: 44th within Wisconsin, only 24th nationally — a gap of 21 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Bay City ranks 24,097 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 21,272 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 451 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
Bay City's moderate rating (24th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
What would actually reduce this score
Bay City's 53.2% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Bay City's figures come from
Bay City's 24th-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 Bay City's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.