Rib Mountain, WI
How exposed is Rib Mountain to wildfire?
USFS scores Rib Mountain at the 31st national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range), a figure built from 3,492 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Rib Mountain at the 32nd national percentile — 0 points above its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Rib Mountain's buildings actually sit
Of Rib Mountain's 3,492 counted buildings, 63.3% carry Direct exposure and only 1% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Rib Mountain compares
Compare Rib Mountain's two percentiles: 69th within Wisconsin, only 31st nationally — a gap of 38 points that marks it as unusually exposed for its own state. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Rib Mountain ranks 21,639 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 4,781 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 254 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
Rib Mountain's moderate wildfire rating (31st 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
Rib Mountain's 63.3% 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 3,492 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Rib Mountain. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Rib Mountain, see the exposure-zones guide.