Traverse City, MI
Traverse City, MI's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
USFS scores Traverse City at the 15th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally), a figure built from 8,399 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 Traverse City at the 15th percentile, close to its 15th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Only 9.6% of Traverse City's 8,399 buildings carry Direct exposure and 5.6% carry Indirect; the remaining 84.8% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 8,399 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
Traverse City against the rest of the country
Traverse City's 52nd-percentile standing inside Michigan outpaces its 15th national percentile — this is a hotter spot than most of its own state, even though the state as a whole runs cooler nationally. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Traverse City ranks 26,795 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,983 by building count (1 is largest). Within Michigan alone, it ranks 361 of 745 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Michigan on its state page.
Traverse City and the insurance market
Traverse City's low rating (15th percentile nationally) sits outside the range where wildfire risk alone reshapes an insurance market — still, a homeowner here loses nothing by comparing rates.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Even with 84.8% of Traverse City 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 Traverse City's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Traverse City's 26,795-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Traverse City's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.