{
  "title": "Wildfire Risk in Hays County, TX 2026 | Satelife",
  "description": "Hays County wildfire risk analyzed with satellite data: Wimberley’s canyon roads, Oak Grove Fire context, and a real River Road property report. Check your address.",
  "image": "https://satelife.ai/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/hays-county-locator.png",
  "canonical": "https://satelife.ai/wildfire-risk/texas/hays-county/",
  "content": "[Home](/)›[Wildfire Risk](/wildfire-risk/)›[Texas](/wildfire-risk/texas/)›Hays County\n\nHays County, Texas · 2026\n\n# Wildfire risk in Hays County: Wimberley and the _access problem_\n\nOur Satelife report for River Road in Wimberley returns **28.78 / 100 — Moderate**, with a **30.6 / 100 hazard layer** and a **25 / 100 road-access layer**. The wider community analysis scores lower at 21.54 / 100, but it still places 231 structures behind 54 exits with only one mapped fire station in range.\n\n[Get your Hays County wildfire risk PDF →](/#cta) [See the Wimberley case study ↓](#case-study)\n\n![Satellite locator map of Hays County, Texas, with the county boundary outlined and Wimberley, San Marcos and Dripping Springs marked](/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/hays-county-locator.webp)\n\nHays County on satellite imagery — Wimberley, San Marcos and Dripping Springs marked across the Hill Country edge between Austin and San Antonio. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.\n\nLocal context\n\n## A recreation valley with roads that are _better for weekends than evacuations_\n\nHays County spans two different Texas growth stories at once: the rapid Interstate 35 belt of San Marcos, Kyle and Buda, and the far more wildfire-sensitive Hill Country side around Wimberley, Driftwood and Dripping Springs. Wimberley sits in the Blanco River and Cypress Creek corridor, in a landscape of oak-juniper cover, vacation rentals, river lots and curved roads that follow water and relief rather than a grid.\n\nThat terrain has already produced recent fire stress. Local reporting put the **Oak Grove Fire near Wimberley** at about **400 acres in 2023**. By Texas standards that is not a record event; by Wimberley standards it is large enough to remind residents that a scenic canyon community does not need six figures of acreage to have a serious evacuation day.\n\n![View across Wimberley, Texas, from Old Baldy showing the valley setting and wooded Hill Country slopes around the town](/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/texan-stadium-from-old-baldy-wimberley-texas-2020.webp)\n\nWimberley from Old Baldy — the built valley floor with wooded slopes and ravines around it. Source: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Texan_Stadium_from_Old_Baldy_Wimberley_Texas_2020.jpg) (CC BY 4.0).\n\nSources: local reporting on the 2023 Oak Grove Fire near Wimberley; parcel and community figures from Satelife reports generated 25 July 2026.\n\nTerrain & fuel\n\n## The fuel is not extreme. The road geometry is _the reason this page exists_\n\nThe River Road property is not a Panhandle grass parcel and not a regrown burn-scar subdivision. Vegetation/fuel reads only **15.2 / 100**, the lowest of the new Texas counties in this batch. The fire-spread simulation and fire-history layers both read **5 / 100**. What pulls the property into the Moderate band is the combination of terrain, climate, hazard and access: **74 vision**, **59.2 climate**, **40 terrain**, **30.6 hazard** and **25 road access**.\n\n![Satellite close-up of the Wimberley case-study area in Hays County showing scattered structures along river and canyon roads through wooded terrain](/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/wimberley-closeup.webp)\n\nWimberley-area community close-up — dispersed structures following creek and canyon roads rather than a square street pattern. Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.\n\nThat split matters. Hays County’s wildfire profile is not “heavy fuel everywhere.” It is “moderate fuel in a place where approach, turnaround and width matter more than outsiders assume.” That is why the mitigation plan leads with annual defensible-space review and access clearance rather than with a more aggressive structure-hardening sequence.\n\nEvacuation\n\n## One mapped station, _54 exits_, and a lot of houses behind them\n\nThe neighborhood run clarifies how Wimberley’s wildfire problem scales. The community score is low, but the road network is not especially loose once you convert it to structures per exit.\n\n231structures in the analyzed community footprint\n\n54independent road exits across 2,860.9 hectares\n\n4.28structures per exit route\n\n1OSM-mapped fire station serving the analyzed area\n\n3.6 minfastest modelled engine time\n\n4.4–8.3 minmodelled hotspot-zone drive-times\n\nThe run did not return a non-null single-point-failure width, so this page does not pretend to have one. What it does have is enough to be specific: a modest exit count relative to built structures, one mapped station, and a parcel whose access layer is materially worse than the wider footprint. That combination is the Hill Country version of wildfire exposure — not catastrophic flame modelling, but a lot of dependency on roads that were not laid out for mass movement.\n\n![Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for River Road in Wimberley showing suppression reach, nearby stations and property road-access findings](/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/report-road-access.webp)\n\n**Report excerpt** — Road access: suppression reach & egress, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, River Road, Wimberley TX 78676 (July 2026). Drive-times are modelled on the public road graph and OSM-mapped stations; decision support, not an evacuation plan.\n\nHazard framing\n\n## Moderate because of route and setting, not because the flame model is _screaming_\n\nThe federal flame-length model for this parcel is restrained: **0.2%** probability of flames over four feet and **0.1%** probability over eight feet. Those are real, low numbers, and they matter. What moves the River Road parcel into Moderate territory anyway is the combination of a 30.6 hazard layer and a 25 road-access layer, with a 74 imagery read on top.\n\n28.78property composite score — Moderate tier\n\n21.54community score — Low tier\n\n30.6hazard layer, the property’s largest weighted pressure point\n\n0.2%probability of flames over 4 ft; 0.1% over 8 ft\n\nThis is exactly the kind of Texas result that would be misread if you looked only at the headline. Wimberley does not score like Fritch, and it does not need to in order to present a real evacuation and access problem. Moderate here means “watch the roads and the parcel clearance,” not “expect a crown-fire analogue.”\n\nHays County is a reminder that Texas wildfire risk often arrives through geometry first and flame length second.\n\nCase study\n\n## One address on River Road, _scored today_\n\nWe ran a full Satelife wildfire-risk report for a property on **River Road, Wimberley TX 78676**. The composite returns **28.78 / 100 — Moderate tier**, at **0.82 confidence**.\n\n![Excerpt from a Satelife wildfire risk report for River Road in Wimberley showing per-layer contributions including Vision 74, Climate 59.2, Terrain 40, Hazard 30.6 and Road access 25](/images/wildfire-risk/hays-county/report-per-layer.webp)\n\n**Report excerpt** — Per-layer contributions, Satelife Wildfire Risk Report, River Road, Wimberley TX 78676 (25 July 2026). Composite 28.78/100, Moderate tier, scored under the United States (`usa_generic`) adapter.\n\nWhat drives the score:\n\n-   **Vision: 74 / 100.** The imagery read sees the structure in a wooded Hill Country setting, not in an open field.\n-   **Hazard: 30.6 / 100.** High enough to matter, and carrying the largest weight in the Texas composite.\n-   **Road access: 25 / 100.** The route to the parcel is a meaningful contributor rather than a footnote.\n-   **Climate: 59.2 / 100 and terrain 40 / 100.** These two keep the parcel from looking like a flat suburban edge.\n-   **Vegetation: 15.2 / 100.** Important because it explains why the property is Moderate rather than materially higher.\n\nThe River Road parcel does not score Moderate because Hays County is full of explosive fuel. It scores Moderate because a fairly ordinary Hill Country lot can still be hard to access at the wrong moment.\n\nThe mitigation plan follows directly from that reading: **audit defensible space annually before fire season** and **verify access-route width and gate clearance**.\n\nInsurance & real estate\n\n## Wimberley buyers have to commission the answer, not _look it up_\n\nHays County is a classic Texas diligence market. Wimberley and Dripping Springs buyers are often purchasing views, trees and topography — exactly the traits that complicate wildfire access — while the state gives them no official hazard zone map to consult. Texas seller disclosure law does not fill the gap because it contains no wildfire designation item to disclose.\n\nThere is also no statutory mitigation-discount schedule for insurers. Any premium benefit attached to defensible space, gate width, turnarounds or ember resistance is a carrier judgment, not a right. If admitted coverage fails, the backstop is the **Texas FAIR Plan Association**, which requires denial by at least two writing carriers before eligibility begins.\n\nThat is why a Wimberley parcel report is commercial due diligence. It documents the road geometry, access constraints and structure setting that a buyer or underwriter cannot infer from county-level statistics or from a listing brochure.\n\nSources: Texas Department of Insurance · Texas FAIR Plan Association · Texas Property Code §5.008.\n\nRisk reduction\n\n## What Hays County homeowners _can actually do_\n\nIn Hays County the standard defensible-space framework still matters, but the highest-value work is unusually route-specific: driveway clearance, gate width, turnarounds, address visibility and seasonal trimming before cured grasses and brush line the approach. The report’s access emphasis is not generic boilerplate. It is the quantitative finding of the parcel.\n\nThe cleanest sibling comparison is [Comal County](/wildfire-risk/texas/comal-county/). Wimberley’s property score is **28.78 / 100 Moderate**, with **4.28 structures per exit** and one mapped station. Bulverde’s property score is **20.62 / 100 Low**, with **1.04 structures per exit** and four stations in range. Same central-Hill-Country fuel family; very different road redundancy.\n\nCoverage\n\n## ZIP codes we cover in Hays County\n\nSatelife runs address-level wildfire reports across every ZIP code in Hays County. The ZIPs below are the Hill Country and Wildland-Urban Interface communities we are asked about most. One caveat that is the whole point of what we do: the risk score is computed for **your parcel**, not the ZIP, so two homes on the same street can land in different tiers. Find your area, then [run your address](/#cta).\n\nZIP code\n\nCommunity\n\nWhy it is on the map\n\n78676\n\nWimberley\n\nRiver Road case study in the Blanco River and Cypress Creek canyon corridor\n\n78666\n\nSan Marcos\n\nCounty seat and east-side growth corridor\n\n78620\n\nDripping Springs\n\nNorthwest Hill Country interface and ranch subdivision growth\n\n78640\n\nKyle\n\nIH-35 growth belt between Austin and San Marcos\n\n78610\n\nBuda\n\nNorthern county growth front with expanding WUI exposure\n\n78619\n\nDriftwood\n\nRural oak-juniper landscape west of Buda\n\nZIP areas per USPS. Texas publishes no statewide fire hazard severity zone map; Wildland-Urban Interface framing per Texas A&M Forest Service.\n\nWhere to go next\n\n## Hays County wildfire risk _in context_\n\n[Texas wildfire risk The statewide picture: no hazard map, eight county pages, three fire regimes](/wildfire-risk/texas/) [Comal County wildfire risk Bulverde and the lower-score Hill Country comparison just south of Hays](/wildfire-risk/texas/comal-county/) [Kendall County wildfire risk Boerne and a wider-exit Hill Country road network](/wildfire-risk/texas/kendall-county/) [Travis County wildfire risk Steiner Ranch and the most access-constrained metro Hill Country page](/wildfire-risk/texas/travis-county/) [Create a wildfire evacuation plan Zones, egress routes, refuge areas](/wildfire-evacuation-plan/) [How Satelife calculates wildfire risk Data sources, score composition, honest limits](/wildfire-risk/methodology/) [Run a wildfire risk report PDF + score + mitigation plan](/#cta)\n\nFAQ\n\n## Frequently asked questions about _Hays County wildfire risk_\n\nIs Wimberley in a serious wildfire area?\n\nYes, but for specific reasons rather than for a headline statewide zone. A Satelife report for River Road in Wimberley returns 28.78 / 100 in the Moderate tier, with a 30.6 / 100 hazard layer and a 25 / 100 road-access layer. The neighborhood analysis is lower at 21.54 / 100, but it still serves 231 structures through only 54 exits with one mapped station in range.\n\nDid Hays County have a recent wildfire near Wimberley?\n\nYes. Local reporting described the Oak Grove Fire near Wimberley in 2023 at roughly 400 acres. That is not a mega-fire in Texas terms, but it is exactly the kind of Hill Country incident that shows how quickly cured brush and canyon roads can turn a moderate parcel score into an operational problem.\n\nWhy is the property score Moderate if the community score is Low?\n\nBecause the parcel itself carries a worse access and hazard picture than the wider footprint. At the River Road property, road access reads 25 / 100 and hazard 30.6 / 100, while the wider community has more redundancy overall even though it still has only one mapped station and 4.28 structures per exit. In Hays County the property can be the tighter constraint than the town-level average.\n\nHow many exits does the Wimberley case study have?\n\nThe community analysis finds 54 independent exits for 231 structures across 2,860.9 hectares, or 4.28 structures per exit. The model did not return a non-null single-point failure measurement for this run, so the main egress takeaway is redundancy ratio and drive-time, not one exact bottleneck width.\n\nWhat mitigation did the River Road report recommend?\n\nAudit defensible space annually before fire season and verify access-route width and gate clearance. That is a more access-heavy recommendation set than Kendall or Comal County, and it matches the 25 / 100 road-access layer in the property report.\n\nScores and evacuation figures on this page are drawn from Satelife wildfire-risk reports generated on 25 July 2026 under the United States (`usa_generic`) adapter: a property report for River Road, Wimberley TX 78676, and a community analysis for the Wimberley-area case study. Texas publishes no statewide fire-hazard-severity map, so the hazard layer is backfilled from the USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities model. The Oak Grove Fire reference comes from local reporting and is included only as local context, not as a scored report input. Drive-times are modelled on OSM-mapped stations and the current road graph. Satelife reports are informational decision support — not a substitute for official evacuation orders, state or federal hazard determinations, or an insurer’s underwriting judgment.\n\n## What does _your Hays County parcel_ look like, layer by layer?\n\nIf you own or are buying in Hays County — Wimberley, Dripping Springs, Driftwood, San Marcos, Kyle or Buda — get the address-level answer: PDF, per-layer score, and a prioritized mitigation plan.\n\n[Start with your address →](/#cta)\n\n[![PRR](/images/prr.png)](/ficha-de-website-voucher-satelife.pdf)\n\n© 2024–2026 Satelife, Lda. All rights reserved.\n\nSatelife reports are for informational purposes only and do not constitute insurance, financial, or legal advice."
}