Word.ws English Dictionary

Waffle House Index

Waffle House Index proper noun: an informal metric used to determine the impact of a storm in terms of disaster recovery, based on whether local Waffle House restaurants are open and serving a full menu.

Proper noun

the Waffle House Index

  1. (US) An informal metric used to determine the impact of a storm in terms of disaster recovery, based on whether local Waffle House restaurants are open and serving a full menu.

Origin of Waffle House Index

Coined by FEMA administrator Craig Fugate in May 2011, following the 2011 Joplin tornado.

Questions about Waffle House Index

What does Waffle House Index mean?
Waffle House Index means an informal metric used to determine the impact of a storm in terms of disaster recovery, based on whether local Waffle House restaurants are open and serving a full menu.
What part of speech is Waffle House Index?
Waffle House Index is a proper noun.

Words near Waffle House Index in the dictionary

  1. waffle cone
  2. waffle cones
  3. Waffle Day
  4. waffle fries
  5. waffle house
  6. Waffle House Index
  7. waffle houses
  8. waffle iron
  9. waffle irons
  10. waffle maker
  11. waffle makers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Waffle House Index (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Waffle House Index.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/waffle_house_index. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.