These Tampa Bay residents moved before a new hurricane season. They told us why.

|The Tampa Bay area’s vulnerabilities to hurricanes were peeled away last year, exposing painful recovery woes after the one-two punch from Helene and Milton.

While many people are staying and rebuilding, others have sold their properties and moved away — safe from the threat of hurricanes growing more dangerous from climate change.

They aren’t alone.

In the six months after Helene , home sales in flooded neighborhoods diverged from those in the rest of Pinellas County, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of real estate data and National Hurricane Center storm surge predictions.

About 8% more sales occurred in areas with the worst flooding than the same period the year before, records show. Across the rest of the county, sales volume was down 8%.

A February report from the n