Golden hash browns, gravy-smothered biscuits, and crispy waffles with a hearty helping of maple syrup are classic comfort foods of the South. But when hurricanes slam into Southeastern cities, the local Waffle House’s hot meals and eye-catching yellow signs offer a different kind of comfort.

If a Waffle House stays open in town, even with limited capacity, neighbors can rest assured that the coming storm is unlikely to wreak havoc. A closed location of the reliable restaurant chain indicates impending disaster. The metric is known as the Waffle House Index.

What might sound like silly logic has become one of the most reliable ways for Southerners — and even federal officials — to assess the severity of a storm and identify communities most in need of immediate assistance.

About two dozen Waffle House locations in the Carolinas and home state of Georgia remained closed Tuesday, nearly two weeks after the states were among those hit by Hurricane Helene. Several other locations were open but offered a limited menu.

As Hurricane Milton heads toward Florida communities still recovering from Helene, many Waffle House locations along the Gulf Coast, including in Tampa, Cape Coral and St. Petersburg, have closed in preparation.

The South’s most popular disaster management agency provides an informal measure of how badly a storm will or has affected a community.

A map of the chain’s more than 1,900 locations, concentrated in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, helps residents of storm-prone states assess whether they are likely to have a power outage, experience severe flooding or face other extreme conditions that make a restaurant resilient could close its doors. For some, it’s a telltale sign of whether they need to evacuate.

Waffle House is known not only for serving breakfast 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but also for its disaster preparedness. For decades, people across the South have noticed that the local Waffle House seemed to be the only business still open during a storm or the first to reopen after the storm.

The restaurant chain’s reputation for staying open when people desperately needed a place to warm up, charge devices and cook a hot meal became a fairly reliable — if amusing — source for tracking recovery efforts.

On social media, Waffle House is sharing color-coded maps of its restaurant locations in specific regions that will soon be affected by the storm or are recovering from storm damage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also offers live tracking.

Green means the location serves a full menu, indicating minimal damage to the area. The light is on and the syrup is flowing.

Yellow means the restaurant serves a limited menu. This is a sign that it is drawing power from a generator and there may be little food available. While there is no running water or electricity in the area, there is enough gas to fry bacon for hungry customers.

Red means the location is closed, a sign of unsafe operating conditions and severe destruction in the restaurant or surrounding communities.

Former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said he came up with the Waffle House Index when he was leading emergency management efforts in Florida in 2004. He was looking for something to eat while surveying the devastation caused by Hurricane Charley and could only find a Waffle House that served a limited menu.

His team noticed other open Waffle Houses in communities without electricity or running water. The restaurants eventually became a key feature on a color-coded map his team provided to help the public and local authorities figure out where storm damage was most severe.

When Fugate joined FEMA under President Barack Obama, he continued to use his color-coded map. He was the agency’s administrator in 2011 when a deadly tornado devastated the city of Joplin, Missouri. Both of the city’s waffle houses reportedly remained open.

The restaurant chain’s preparedness for disaster is no coincidence. In 2005, seven locations were destroyed and 100 more closed during Hurricane Katrina, but company executives saw a surge in business at the restaurants, which quickly reopened.

According to the company’s website, they soon adopted a business strategy that revolved around keeping their restaurants operating during and after a disaster. The chain said it has invested in portable generators, purchased a mobile command center and trained employees on what they can do in the event of a power outage.

Waffle House closed many Florida locations before Hurricane Milton made landfall, indicating the damage is likely to be severe.

Milton was re-rated to a Category 5 storm Tuesday as it headed toward Florida’s west coast. The powerful storm could hit Tampa and St. Petersburg directly once in a century, inundating the populous region with massive storm surges and turning debris from Helene’s devastation into projectiles.