Hurricane Florence is a serious threat – just ask the Waffle House Warning Center



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Everyone is getting ready for Hurricane Florence, which continues to head to the Carolinas. Residents evacuate the area, FEMA refuel, Weather Channel reporters release their most powerful windbreaks and the Waffle House Storm Center is activated.

Yes, that's right: one of the most popular breakfast chains in the South plays an important role in hurricane forecasting. Waffle houses are known to stay open through everything, so when the company decides to close one of its sites due to bad weather, it means that the storm is an abnormally bad threat. It's called the Waffle House Index, and FEMA is watching it. Seriously.

Former FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate proposed the Waffle House Index as a way to determine how a community in general was coping in the event of a disaster.

"The Waffle House test not only tells us how quickly a business could bounce back – it also tells us how the community is doing," Dan Stoneking wrote on the FEMA blog in 2011. "Restaurants, grocery stores and convenience stores or banks can reopen, local economies will start generating revenue again – signaling a stronger recovery for this community.

The Waffle House index – which, again, is used by our government – has a color code. If the waffles are open and offer a full menu, the index is green. If they offer a limited menu, it is yellow. If the locations in the affected area are forced to close, the index is red – and as Waffles are very well prepared, it is the rarest scenario. In Murrells Inlet, S.C., an employee of Waffle House, still in business, told a reporter that during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, only closed after the ceiling tiles began to fall.

On Tuesday, Waffle House released a photo of staff members meeting in a conference room, in front of screens with maps and the expected trajectory of the hurricane. "Plan and be safe", the company has encouraged its customers. Some southern city residents base their decision to evacuate on whether the Waffle House is still open (this is not recommended).

Hoping everyone in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has evacuated the city: their Waffle House has just called the red code. WMBF News in Myrtle Beach reported that a waffle house had shut down two days before the storm predicted.

Regarding the Waffle House Storm Center: they have a message for Hurricane Flo.

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