As the tropical disturbance that became Hurricane Helene moved north toward Florida’s Gulf Coast on Tuesday, I had an argument with myself about evacuating from Tallahassee: If I ran from the storm, would I get caught up in it anyway? I was thinking of Charlize Theron’s character in the movie “Prometheus,” crushed by a spaceship that crashed while she ran in a straight line away from it.

Stricken by the thought of being trapped (or worse) in my house by falling trees, I decided to drive to Greenville, S.C., with my elderly cat, but not without extreme anxiety. Many Floridians like me who were not under mandatory evacuation orders remember Hurricane Michael in 2018 and other recent unpredictable, dangerous hurricanes. For us, decisions about whether to stay or leave and where to go have become more tortuous in ways that may be difficult to understand for those who don’t experience hurricanes regularly.

Many don’t have the resources to flee monstrous storms such as Helene. But for those who can evacuate, there is a sense of not being able to outrun them or that the destinations may become just as perilous. Every possibility feels both right and wrong and also like disaster deferred for only days — while dithering only shrinks the window for escape.

This time, many of my Tallahassee friends who previously hunkered down left the city, driven as much by the cumulative effect of anxiety and exhaustion as by the particular threats of Helene.

But more than the sheer repetition of extreme weather, the stakes have grown — for our homes, our communities and our lives. These storms, increasingly supercharged by climate change and hotter water in the Gulf of Mexico, get bigger faster and are more likely to ravage and flood the interior than storms past.

It may seem irrational to see some people stay with their homes to defend them, but consider coming home to a damaged house that an insurance company may never compensate you for. One Tallahassee friend posted on Facebook that he was staying and had a “chainsaw ready to go” in case trees fell on his house. Another said, “We’ve always left before. This time — the fatigue, the frequency, the cost of going has started to weigh,” adding, “If we stay we can care for our home easier faster.”