‘Waffle House Index’ shows evidence of Milton’s potential wrath in Tampa Bay

Image via AP.

The Waffle House Index is off the charts in the Tampa Bay area.

For the uninitiated, that’s a term coined by former Florida Emergency Director and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Chair Craig Fugate to gauge how serious a storm is in a particular location.

Waffle House is famous — or infamous, depending on who you ask — for staying open when pretty much everyone else is closed up.

As of Wednesday morning — about 12 hours, give or take, before Hurricane Milton makes landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast — just about every Waffle House in the Tampa Bay area was closed. The only open locations in or near the region are far inland.

Even Waffle House has embraced its namesake index.

“When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power,” a blog post on the famous breakfast joint’s website reads. “First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the ‘Waffle House Index.’”

Waffle House said in its post that it closes restaurant locations for “severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.”

“If you get there and the Waffle House is closed,” Fugate has said, according to Waffle House, “that’s really bad. That’s where you go to work.”

Hurricane Milton, as of the 8 a.m. advisory, was about 250 miles southwest of Tampa and moving northeast at 16 miles per hour.

A hurricane warning is in effect for the entire Tampa Bay region, as well as parts of Southwest Florida and parts of Florida’s east coast. Milton is expected to exit the eastern part of the state sometime Thursday as a hurricane.

A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected in the area within 36 hours.

The area is also under a tornado watch until 9 p.m. Wednesday.

A storm surge warning is also in effect for most of Florida’s west coast, from Flamingo north to Yankeetown, including Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor.

A storm surge warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland over the next 36 hours. The warning applies most acutely to coastal and low-lying areas.

Landfall is expected somewhere along the west-central Gulf Coast sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane.

Hurricane-force winds extend 30 miles from the center of the storm, with tropical-storm-force winds extending 125 miles.

Under the 8 a.m. advisory, the Tampa Bay area is slated to receive 8-12 feet of storm surge, though that number depends largely on landfall. Meteorologists expect the worst surge to occur at landfall and south of the eye, meaning if the storm makes landfall south of Tampa Bay, surge levels could be lower.

However, meteorologists caution that it is near impossible to predict exactly where the storm will ultimately make landfall and projections thus far have moved around between the Pinellas County coast to further south in Sarasota County.

As of the most recent advisory, the area from Anna Maria Island to Boca Grande is slated for the worst storm surge, at 10-15 feet.

Localized flooding is also possible with extensive rain totals expected throughout the day. The current forecast predicts 6-12 inches of rainfall, with up to 18 inches in some isolated areas.

“This rainfall brings the risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with moderate to major river flooding,” the advisory notes.

The next advisory from the National Hurricane Center will be issued at 11 a.m.