The Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale has nothing on the Waffle Home Index.
Beloved Southern breakfast mainstay Waffle Home introduced it’ll shut dozens of Florida places in Hurricane Milton’s path in an unorthodox — but surprisingly correct — indicator of the storm’s anticipated severity referred to as the “Waffle Home Index.”
“Our #whindex standing maps mirror our closures as of 2pm as we speak upfront of #HurricaneMilton. Extra updates to come back. Please keep secure,” the chain wrote in a publish on its official X account alongside maps exhibiting closed places in Tampa and Fort Myers represented by crimson dots.
The Class 4 hurricane is anticipated to make landfall on the west coast of Florida after darkish on Wednesday, bringing doubtlessly catastrophic sustained winds of 145 mph. Tens of millions have fled the state in one of many largest evacuations within the state’s historical past.
The chain’s 1,600 places dot a lot of the American South, from the mid-Atlantic to Florida and masking giant swaths of the Gulf Coast space.
However the restaurant has a popularity for staying open — albeit generally with restricted menu choices — it doesn’t matter what Mom Nature cooks up.
Even in uncommon cases the place its eating places do shut, resembling throughout Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the eateries endeavor to shortly re-open to present hungry patrons in storm zones a style of normalcy — with a aspect of waffles and grits.
The eating places are so reliably open that the long-lasting illuminated black-and-yellow indicators sign to passing motorists {that a} forecasted storm is probably not as worrisome as predicted.
When the indicators are switched off, nonetheless, it signifies a really extreme climate occasion is on the horizon.
“In case you get there and the Waffle Home is closed?” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate is quoted in a weblog publish by the corporate. “That’s actually dangerous. That’s the place you go to work.”
Fugate is credited with conceiving the Waffle Home Index in 2004 whereas looking for out a scorching meal after surveying injury left by Hurricane Charley. He shortly realized Waffle Home was the one possibility.
As his workforce labored following the storm, they discovered many times that Waffle Homes had been usually the lone open eateries in storm-ravaged areas, even those who had misplaced water and energy.
They later collated the open or closed standing of the eating places on a color-coded map distributed by the workforce to present officers and members of the general public an at-a-glance reference exhibiting the place the storm had performed essentially the most injury, CBS reported.
Inexperienced means enterprise as traditional, yellow means open with restricted menu choices and the dreaded crimson dots imply a location is closed — indicating important storm injury or unsafe situations.
Based mostly on the plethora of crimson dots on the present Waffle Home Index map shared by the corporate Wednesday, refuge-seekers might have to attend till Milton has handed by way of earlier than filling up on sausage biscuits and omelets.