{"id":423525,"date":"2026-10-09T18:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T18:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/423525\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T18:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T18:26:09","slug":"yes-the-waffle-house-index-is-real-how-a-southern-staple-became-an-unofficial-hurricane-metric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/423525\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, the Waffle House Index is real. How a Southern staple became an (unofficial!) hurricane metric"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Floridians have special signals that a hurricane is going to be bad: Jim Cantore on our beaches. Disney World closing. <\/p>\n

But for Floridians who have been through several hurricanes, four words can send chills down their spines: Waffle House is closed.<\/p>\n

It takes a lot to close a Waffle House, so when the 24-hour diner announces it\u2019s closing locations, Floridians know they need to get prepared.<\/p>\n

On Friday, ahead of Hurricane Isaias\u2019 landfall, rumblings of signs on Waffle House doors started appearing on social media. State Rep. Michelle Salzman, a Republican who represents the Escambia County area, posted a picture of one on her X account.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know it\u2019s time to hunker down,\u201d Salzman wrote.<\/p>\n

The sign announced the store was locking its doors at 9:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

The Waffle House website <\/a>showed several Waffle Houses currently shut down, as of just before noon Central Time, in both Alabama and Florida.<\/p>\n

What is the Waffle House Index?<\/p>\n

The Waffle House Index is an unofficial scale for understanding how bad a natural disaster hit a community. It was first created by Craig Fugate, who was the Florida Emergency Management Director during the hurricanes of 2004.<\/p>\n

Fugate said his team noticed, after Hurricane Charley, that Waffle House would often be the only place open, even in communities without power or running water. If a Waffle House was closed, it was a clue that conditions in that community were especially bad. <\/p>\n

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the company created a manual for opening after a disaster, added portable generators, and created special teams to help get stores up and running after a storm.<\/p>\n

[WATCH: How Waffle House became a barometer for how bad a hurricane is (from 2024)]<\/p>\n

The Waffle House Index became a way to help emergency managers triage recovery efforts. Fugate continued to use the index when he became FEMA administrator in 2009.<\/p>\n

An area is in the green if the Waffle Houses are open, have full power, and are serving a full menu.<\/p>\n

An area is in the yellow if the Waffle Houses are open, but the menu is limited. There may also be a loss of power.<\/p>\n

An area is in the red if the Waffle Houses are closed.<\/p>\n

During Hurricane Ian in 2022, 40 Waffle Houses were closed <\/a>at the height of the storm. A couple of days later, only six Waffle Houses were closed in the southwest Florida areas where the storm made landfall.<\/p>\n

A post from the Waffle House account from 2024 shows the Waffle House Index in action. <\/p>\n

Waffle House has not posted about the Waffle House Index on social media yet for Hurricane Isaias.<\/p>\n

News 6 has reached out to both Waffle House and FEMA to see if the index is still in use in any way. Waffle House has not responded yet. A FEMA spokesperson said they would get back to us.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 Floridians have special signals that a hurricane is going to be bad: Jim Cantore on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[13888,28,46086,575,1846,166170,139,141,140,50643,166940],"class_list":["post-423525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-fema","tag-florida","tag-florida-foodie","tag-food","tag-hurricane","tag-isaias","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-waffle-house","tag-waffle-house-index"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}