Chris Miller rode out Hurricane Helene just over two weeks ago inside his picturesque yellow home across from the Gulf of Mexico in Bradenton Beach, a tiny Florida city on a barrier island. As the storm surge rose, he readied a wet suit in case he needed to escape.

As a huge wall of water swept away his next-door neighbor’s house, he called the mayor, who lives down the road.

“I told him, ‘Bev’s house is headed your way,’” Mr. Miller recalled on Friday.

So when Hurricane Milton bore down this week, with Bradenton Beach directly in its path, Mr. Miller knew that he had to evacuate.

“After we saw what we saw,” he said, “we couldn’t stay.”

Neither did anyone else, Bradenton Beach officials believe — the first time in recent memory that even the most dedicated die-hards had no interest in riding out the storm. The forecast was simply too scary, and the memory of Helene — and Ian, another frightening storm two years earlier — was too fresh.