Marinette County, Wisconsin · Marinette
Water spreading, a burst pipe, sewage, mold or smoke? Call to be connected with a restoration company that serves Marinette, Peshtigo and Niagara. Start the steps below while you wait.
Answered 24/7 by a participating local provider. We're a referral service and don't do the work ourselves. How it works
Start here
Pick the closest match. These steps limit the damage and protect your insurance claim. Skip anything that isn't safe.
Pipes freeze in Marinette County on about 85 nights a year, mostly November to April. Older homes, 32% of the stock here, are most at risk.
May brings the most downpours to Marinette County, part of 4 heavy-rain days a year. Check the sump first.
Sewage backups in Marinette County spike on heavy-rain days, about 4 a year, when sewer mains fill up and water finds the lowest drain.
Marinette County's wettest day in the 2015–2024 record brought 1.95 inches, and about 107 freeze-thaw days a year mean ice dams in some winters.
38% of occupied homes in Marinette County heat mainly with wood or propane, above the Wisconsin county median of 32.9%.
With 3 muggy nights a year, mold in Marinette County can appear within days of a leak. Dry first, then clean.
Local risk profile
With 29,484 homes and around 42,046 residents, Marinette County is 1,399 square miles of eastern Wisconsin. Besides Marinette, the county seat, the biggest communities are Peshtigo, Niagara and Crivitz. The county's median home was built in 1975.
41/100 Water Damage Risk Index: Moderate Marinette County ranks 56 of 72 Wisconsin counties. See the statewide ranking and method.The three factors where Marinette County ranks highest compared with other Wisconsin counties.
Marinette is on the colder side of Wisconsin for pipes. It averaged 173 freezing nights a year over 2015–2024, 85 of them at 20°F or colder, cold enough for pipes in outside walls and crawl spaces to freeze. Among 72 Wisconsin counties that's 20th.
The longest cold spell was straight 40 days without the temperature rising above freezing, ending in March 2015. The coldest night reached about -24°F on January 26, 2019. Burst pipes usually show up when a spell like that breaks and the ice thaws.
Expect the hardest freezes in January, inside a season that runs November to April. That's when an outdoor spigot left connected to a hose, or a pipe in a crawl space, is most likely to split.
On average the first fall freeze arrives around Oct 8 and the last spring freeze around May 16.
Marinette gets fewer downpours than most Wisconsin counties, but they still fill basements. Of roughly 33.2 inches of yearly precipitation, the damage comes from the 4 days a year with an inch or more, ranked 70th of 72. April, May and June see the most. The single wettest day in the record: 1.95 inches, June 26, 2016. Multi-day storms matter most for basements; the wettest three days on record here totaled 3.31 inches (through June 18, 2018).
Freeze-thaw days, below freezing overnight and above it by afternoon, come about 107 times a year here. They're the main driver of ice dams and of water working its way through foundation cracks in late winter.
Housing
58% of homes in Marinette County predate 1980, close to the Wisconsin county median of 54.1%, which ranks 23rd of Wisconsin's 72 counties.
Older and newer homes sit side by side here: 32% predate 1960 and 19% are from 2000 or later. Corroded pipe is the typical failure in the first group, burst supply hoses in the second.
23% date from 1980 to 1999, the window when polybutylene, a gray flexible plastic supply pipe, was used in some homes. It's prone to leaks at the fittings, so it's worth checking for in a house from those years.
Here 11% of housing is manufactured homes. Check the skirting and the heat tape on the main water line every fall, because that one exposed line is what freezes.
The Census counted 35% of homes as vacant, above the Wisconsin county median of 12%. Empty houses are where a small leak turns into a large claim, because nobody is there to hear it.
Beyond water
About 3 nights a year in Marinette County stay at 65°F or warmer, a sign of muggy summer air (58th of 72 counties). June is the wettest month. Keep indoor humidity under 60%, as the EPA advises, and dry any leak within 24 to 48 hours; in a humid month a wet basement left alone won't dry by itself.
Mold remediation: what to expectHeating fuel matters for fire risk. In Marinette County it's 49% utility gas, 10% electric, 28% propane and 10% wood. Wood heat is above the Wisconsin norm. Annual chimney and vent inspection, which the NFPA recommends, is one of the most effective fire-prevention habits for these homes.
Fire and smoke cleanup: first stepsCoverage
Calls connect to restoration companies that work across Marinette County. The largest communities by population:
Population from ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates. Townships and unincorporated areas are covered too.
Nearby
Florence and Forest get more pipe-freeze nights than Marinette. Its housing is the oldest in the area by share of homes built before 1980.
By the numbers
| Factor | Marinette | Wisconsin median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homes built before 1960 | 32% | 31% | 34 of 72 |
| Homes built before 1980 | 58% | 54% | 23 of 72 |
| Homes built 2000 or later | 19% | 21% | 51 of 72 |
| Manufactured or mobile homes | 11% | 4.8% | 4 of 72 |
| Vacant homes | 35% | 12% | 14 of 72 |
| Wood or propane heat | 38% | 33% | 30 of 72 |
| Nights at 20°F or colder | 85/yr | 73/yr | 20 of 72 |
| Days with 1 inch+ of rain | 4/yr | 6.3/yr | 70 of 72 |
| Freeze-thaw days | 107/yr | 94/yr | 2 of 72 |
| Muggy nights (65°F+) | 3/yr | 11/yr | 58 of 72 |
Rank 1 is the highest value. Bars run from the lowest to the highest Wisconsin county; the tick marks the median; orange means higher water damage risk than the median, green means lower.
Questions
Peak risk months in Marinette County: freezing from November to April, heavy rain in April, May and June.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024 5-year estimates (2020-2024); weather from NOAA nClimGrid-Daily county averages (EpiNOAA), 2015–2024, averaged across the county; county boundaries from Census TIGER. Reviewed 2026-10-21. Methodology