As Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida last week, Billy Cox eyed the sky, talked to his neighbors, and decided to stay put. 

He figured his home in Sarasota was on high ground, on a former cattle ranch just outside of mandatory evacuation orders. As the gathering storm slid east across the Gulf of Mexico, nearing the physical limit of how much heat could transfer into energy, his daughter Savannah texted late into the night, trying to convince him to “get the hell out of there,” he says.