Waffle House, a natural disaster bellwether, closes Florida locations ahead of Hurricane Milton
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Waffle House, a natural disaster bellwether, closes Florida locations ahead of Hurricane Milton
When a Waffle House temporarily closes, customers pay attention.
Waffle Houses throughout the Southeast have become an informal yet important gauge of a disaster’s severity because they’re normally open seven days a week.
On Wednesday, the restaurant chain’s X account posted locations in Tampa, Fort Myers, Orlando, Ocala and Daytona, Florida, that are closed ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall.
“They shut down the nearest waffle houses… it’s getting real,” one person replied, while one meteorologist tweeted: “I know people joke about the status of #WaffleHouse during hurricanes, but if being closed does encourage more people to evacuate, that is a good thing!”
Hurricane Milton, a storm that’s wavered between a Category 4 and 5, is advancing toward Florida’s west coast, and expected to make landfall late on Wednesday or early Thursday. It’s become one the top five most intense Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history.
“Accordingly, in areas predicted to be hardest hit, we will preemptively close restaurants with a goal of reopening them as soon as it is safe to do so to serve the communities that have [been] there for us over the years,” said Waffle House spokesperson Njeri Boss over email.
The Waffle House Index, which signals whether there’s severe damage or unsafe conditions in the area, consists of three measures: green, yellow and red.
Green means the restaurant is open, yellow means there are service or menu limitations, and red means it’s closed. Waffle House provides maps on X that show the status of its restaurants in a given region.
The index was devised by Craig Fugate, former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While the index is often used to assess an area’s condition after a storm, Waffle House closures beforehand are significant. “Any time Waffle House closes, it’s bad,” Fugate told Marketplace over email.
Waffle Houses are prepared ahead of natural disasters because they’re located in areas prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, said Pat Warner, the former vice president of culture at Waffle House, in a 2015 Marketplace interview.
Employees even have hurricane playbooks that show them how to respond during a crisis and restaurants have limited, emergency menus that emphasize efficiency.
The Florida Division of Emergency Management has a list of evacuation orders by Florida county that you can access on its website here.
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