Then Brian Norton, a 55-year-old tech worker and podcast host, got help from an unlikely source: the Whataburger app.
The app’s map showed where the company’s big-box restaurants across Houston were still open, and instead of telling Texans where they could get burgers, biscuits, and taquitos, Norton quickly realized he could use the map to see where power still was on or had been restored in the city.
His discovery went viral after being posted to social media, with thousands of people praising him for helping them find out if their loved ones had powers or how to escape. Sweltering heat This is because the temperature and humidity have soared.
“The fact that the Whataburger app is giving us a little bit of hope is so Texas,” Norton told The Washington Post.
The Whataburger app acts as an outage tracker, which is handy since the power company doesn’t provide maps.
Approximately 1.9 million power outages remain. pic.twitter.com/d8srWmw1oV— BBQ Brian (@BBQBryan) July 9, 2024
Norton’s epiphany came during a late-night food hunt. His home in Tomball, Texas, a city about 35 miles north of downtown Houston, lost power about 7 a.m. Monday as Category 1 storm Beryl made landfall, downing power lines and knocking down trees. His backup generator kicked in quickly, lighting the house and starting a refrigerator stocked with pounds of meat for barbecue lovers. But that afternoon, the internet went down.
Norton and his wife were planning to stay home for a few days, but didn’t want to “go completely crazy.” That night, they decided to look for restaurants that were open. Their search led Norton to a restaurant chain that “tasted like something I’d remember from my childhood.”
He downloaded the Whataburger app, but when one restaurant in Tomball was listed as open, Norton was a bit skeptical, so he broadened his search to the entire Houston area, where he soon saw a patchwork of gray and orange Ws, the latter logo marking an open Whataburger.
“I could see these little gray waves and these little orange waves shifting,” Norton says. “I thought, ‘Wow! Now I can see the extent of the problem.’ It’s not a perfect tool, of course, but it’s a pretty solid tool.”
When Norton posted about it on X, it quickly spread on social media, being shared on neighborhood pages and family group chats. Users noticed that a Whataburger being open also meant that nearby gas stations and stores likely had power, too — a useful tracking service at a time when CenterPoint Energy’s power restoration map was down.
As of Wednesday night, Centrepoint’s website states: Power has been restored to more than 1 million customers, down from a peak of about 2.26 million on Monday. About 40% of Whataburger’s 165 restaurants in the Houston area are open.
A CenterPoint spokesperson told The Washington Post in a statement: Power outage map The maps have been unavailable since devastating storms in May caused customers to flock to the site, resulting in “technical issues,” the spokesman said, adding that the company plans to replace the maps with a “redesigned cloud-based platform” by the end of July.
“We acknowledge the inconvenience caused to our customers and will continue to provide updates regarding the outage,” the statement added.
The scale of the outages and the lack of tracking maps have frustrated residents in the nation’s fourth-largest city. Carlys Chatman, a business law professor at Southern Methodist University, said the issues raise questions about Houston’s preparedness.
“I can start my car from my phone anywhere in the world, but CenterPoint doesn’t tell me where the power is out,” Chatman said. “So does that mean a burger joint has more information about outages than the power company?”
Like many Houston residents, Chatman spent much of Tuesday checking in on loved ones, all of whom, she said, had the same burning question: “When will the power come back on?”
After a friend shared a post about the Norton trick, Chatman jumped on the Whataburger app, saying that even though his home was still without power, he saw that his local Whataburger was open and assumed the hack wouldn’t work.
But within 10 minutes, power was restored. She said she compared her friend’s zip code to the Whataburger map and found it to be “very accurate” in showing whether their area had power.
When Michelle Guillot Thibodeaux, 49, heard about what’s now being called the “What-A-Burger Map” or “Whataburger Workaround,” she used it to check if her Airbnb property in Galveston still had power. She saw that two Whataburgers in the area were listed as closed, so she assumed the area was still without power.
“It’s crazy and ironic that we’d rely on a Texas staple, Whataburger, to tell us where our electricity is,” Thibodeau said, “but people are resourceful and will do anything to find out where their electricity is.”
Whataburger President and CEO Ed Nelson said the company is pleased that Houston residents have found the app useful, but he cautioned that it should only be used to get a general idea of the power situation.
This isn’t the first time restaurant chains have been called in during storm emergencies. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued so-called Waffle House Index To gauge the seriousness of the situation.
Similar to the Whataburger tracker, if a Waffle House location shows up in red (meaning it’s closed), the situation is considered serious.
Perhaps fittingly, Waffle House was one of the few businesses still open near Thibodaux’s Galveston facility, she said.
