Winner, SD
Winner wildfire risk explained
USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model puts Winner at the 49th national percentile for risk to structures, modestly above the national average for wildfire risk — a score built from 1,758 actual buildings. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Winner's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 46th percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
81.6% of Winner's 1,758 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 4% Direct and 14.5% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Winner compares
Inside South Dakota, Winner sits at just the 27th percentile even though it scores 49th nationally — the state's overall wildfire exposure is high enough to make this a relatively quiet corner of it. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Winner ranks 16,182 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 8,198 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 322 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Winner
Winner's elevated wildfire rating (49th 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 81.6% of Winner's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
More on how this number was built
Winner's 49th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Winner, see the exposure-zones guide.