Summit Lake, WI
How exposed is Summit Lake to wildfire?
USFS scores Summit Lake at the 19th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 232 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Summit Lake at the 18th 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
USFS classifies 87.5% of Summit Lake's buildings as Direct exposure, higher than its 12.1% Indirect share and far above its 0.4% Minimal share — a profile where 203 structures sit close enough to vegetation that lot clearing matters most.
Where Summit Lake ranks
There's little gap between Summit Lake's 19th national percentile and its 27th percentile inside Wisconsin, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Summit Lake ranks 25,579 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 23,751 by building count (1 is largest). Within Wisconsin alone, it ranks 592 of 808 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Wisconsin on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Summit Lake
Summit Lake's low wildfire rating (19th 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.
What would actually reduce this score
Because Direct exposure dominates in Summit Lake (87.5%), the highest-leverage fix is defensible space, not roofing or vents alone — covered in the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Summit Lake's 25,579-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what direct exposure implies beyond Summit Lake, see the exposure-zones guide.