Yale, SD
Yale wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Yale at the 45th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (modestly above the national average for wildfire risk), a figure built from 131 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 Yale at the 44th percentile, close to its 45th-percentile risk score.
Where Yale's buildings actually sit
Yale rates 90.1% Minimal exposure against just 9.9% Direct and 0% Indirect — of 131 buildings counted, few sit close enough to burnable vegetation for USFS to flag them individually.
Yale against the rest of the country
Inside South Dakota, Yale sits at just the 21st percentile even though it scores 45th 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, Yale ranks 17,440 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 27,691 by building count (1 is largest). Within South Dakota alone, it ranks 350 of 439 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for South Dakota on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Yale
Yale's elevated wildfire rating (45th 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.
Hardening a home in Yale
With 90.1% of buildings rated Minimal exposure, Yale gets less benefit from structure hardening than a Direct- or Indirect-dominant place would — the home-hardening guide explains why the zone matters.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide shows exactly how USFS turned 131 counted buildings into the percentiles shown above for Yale. For more on what minimal exposure implies beyond Yale, see the exposure-zones guide.