Wellesley, MA
How exposed is Wellesley to wildfire?
Wellesley's 9,033 buildings earn a 30th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — close to the middle of USFS's national wildfire-risk range. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Wellesley at the 26th percentile, close to its 30th-percentile risk score.
Wellesley's building exposure, zone by zone
Only 26.9% of Wellesley's 9,033 buildings carry Direct exposure and 0% carry Indirect; the remaining 73.1% are Minimal, which shifts the risk driving this page's score toward the surrounding landscape rather than any one structure. At 9,033 buildings, this is a substantial built environment, so the shares below describe a real population of structures, not a handful of edge cases.
How Wellesley compares
Within Massachusetts, Wellesley ranks higher (78th percentile) than it does nationally (30th) — one of the more fire-exposed places in a state that, overall, scores lower than that. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wellesley ranks 22,029 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 1,835 by building count (1 is largest). Within Massachusetts alone, it ranks 58 of 248 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Massachusetts on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Wellesley
Wellesley's moderate rating (30th 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
Wellesley's 73.1% Minimal-exposure share means structure-level hardening matters less here than it would elsewhere — still worth the low-cost basics, per the home-hardening guide.
Where Wellesley's figures come from
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 9,033 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Wellesley. The exposure-zones guide covers what Wellesley's dominant minimal exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.