When it comes to rules of thumb, there’s a good rule of thumb — they don’t necessarily tell the whole truth, but they can capture and condense ideas in striking ways.
Many of these rough principles are commonsensical, and some are light-hearted — for example, there are Occam’s Razor (“the simplest explanation is usually the best one”) and the Streisand Effect (“by publicly objecting to unflattering news coverage, you draw more attention to it”).
Such approximations can also serve more serious purposes, including in times of distress and disaster.
A good example is an informal indicator of US storm strength called the “Waffle House Index” — references to which are now swirling around the internet as Hurricane Milton wreaks havoc in Florida.
The term has been around for more than a decade, and while it is commercial in nature, its potential to provide a snapshot of the extent of storm damage has previously been acknowledged by none other than the United States’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“Over the years there have been several news articles to come out about a little something called the ‘Waffle House Index’,” FEMA stated in a 2017 blog post.
“This index is pretty ingenious — it relies on the open or closed status of the well-known diner chain in disaster-affected areas.”
What is the index?
The Waffle House Index (or, as it has also been dubbed, the “Waffle House Test”) is named after US fast-food chain Waffle House.
The company has 1,900 US outlets, mostly in the nation’s hurricane-prone south-east, and uses a traffic-light-style colour-coded scale on social media to reflect the operational status of its restaurants during natural disasters.
The idea seems to have first gained currency in 2011, thanks to news reports in the wake of a so-called “super outbreak” of tornadoes across the United States.
A Wall Street Journal story from the time summarised the Waffle House Index as follows:
- “Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on.
- “Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies.
- “Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.”
A map of Orlando showing the so-called ‘Waffle House Index’ as Hurricane Milton moved over Florida. (X: Waffle House)
FEMA itself has spoken in favour of the usefulness of the index, describing it as “a simple test to determine how quickly a community might be able to get up and running again after a disaster”.
Over the past fortnight, as hurricanes Helene and Milton approached and hit Florida’s coast, Waffle House has taken to social media to activate its index.
In the past few days, the company has been providing updates on X (formerly known as Twitter) about outlets in the anticipated path of Milton that have closed in advance of the hurricane’s arrival.
During previous disasters, the company set up its own storm centre — and, according to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, it did so again in recent days.
On his official Facebook page, Mr Kemp said he had recently visited the centre, and he thanked the company for its work “to prepare and inform the public during times like this”.
How helpful is the idea?
While linking dough to disasters is bound to attract attention, it’s probably worth applying a grain of salt.
In 2015, US fact-checking website Snopes cautioned against setting too much store by the Waffle House Index, warning that the idea, while not baseless, was taking on a life of its own as a “fun fact” that did not necessarily reflect the full reality.
Snopes reported that while FEMA “informally references” such an index, it was not FEMA practice to “formally use Waffle House closures to assess the scope of disasters”.
“It’s true that FEMA factors the impact on large businesses into its assessment of natural disasters, but it’s similarly accurate to note Waffle House itself holds no particular magical ability to divine the scope of a hurricane,” it concluded.
A satellite image showing Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP: NOAA)
Some on social media have gone further, with one X user recently deriding the index as “just some company’s marketing scheme”.
With that said, it’s not just Florida residents, FEMA and the media who’ve picked up on the idea — it also seems to have caught on within academia, with some experts referring favourably to its potential explanatory power.
In a history of the company that lends its name to the concept, cultural anthropologist Ty Matejowsky has written of the idea’s resonance, describing the index as “an unofficial metric that helps gauge storm severity and appropriate disaster response based on the number and timing of Waffle House closings and re-openings in affected areas”.
Risk management specialists Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger have, in their book Theorizing Crisis Communication, argued along similar lines:
“The Waffle House Index … has practical utility as a means to assess the severity of a crisis and what resources a community might need for recovery.”
