What is the Waffle House Index? How the restaurant chain is used to measure a storm’s severity [Video]

As Hurricane Helene approached Florida on Thursday, several local Waffle House locations closed, leaving users on social media worried about the severity of the storm.

Ahead of Helene making landfall at approximately 11:10 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26, Waffle House reportedly closed all of its locations in Tallahassee and Crawfordville.

“Our mission always has been to keep our Associates out of harm’s way,” Njeri Boss, Vice President of Food Safety & Public Relations for Waffle House, told TODAY.com via email. “Accordingly, in areas predicted to be hardest hit and those where mandatory evacuations were ordered, we did preemptively close restaurants.”

Boss added, “Thereafter, we planned to reopen them as soon as it is safe so we could serve and support the communities in which we are located.”

By Friday morning, a social media user shared on X that a location in Tallahassee was back up and running.

Over the last decade, the Waffle House Index has been unofficially used to …