Mitchell, SD
Mitchell wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Mitchell at the 67th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (well above the national norm for wildfire risk), a figure built from 7,533 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Mitchell at the 63rd national percentile — 3 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Mitchell's buildings actually sit
Only 9% of Mitchell's 7,533 buildings carry Direct exposure and 34.1% carry Indirect; the remaining 56.9% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 7,533 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Mitchell against the rest of the country
There's little gap between Mitchell's 67th national percentile and its 60th 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, Mitchell ranks 10,572 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 2,270 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 176 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Mitchell and the insurance market
At the 67th percentile nationally, Mitchell 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.
Hardening a home in Mitchell
Even with 56.9% of Mitchell 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
Every one of the two percentiles behind Mitchell's 10,572-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Mitchell, see the exposure-zones guide.