Hurricane Beryl’s shockingly strong landfall on the Texas coast knocked out power for over a million Texans, who are relying on a particularly unusual source for power updates—the fast food chain Whataburger’s mobile app.
Whataburger’s app is feeding Texans weather updates because the outage map by key provider CenterPoint Energy hasn’t worked since a wind storm hit the area in May, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Texans have a particularly wacky time weathering power outages because it’s the only state to have a power grid separate from the other major U.S. grid systems on the east and west coasts. Texans’ reliance on their geriatric power grid might be upended once more if a proposal from the Donald Trump-aligned policy making group, Project 2025, is implemented during Trump’s possible second term.
Project 2025’s agenda calls for the National Weather Service to commercialize its free forecasting predictions, which is in line with other conservative demands to privatize storm forecasting.
Project 2025 also wants the National Hurricane Center to eliminate any information that leans to either side of the climate change debate, despite leading meteorologists insisting that the unusually catastrophic devastation Beryl left in its wake was aided by climate change.
Whataburger’s official company account chimed in on the havoc Beryl is wreaking on the Lone Star State. “Y’all be safe out there,” it posted on X, in response to a user confirming that the company’s app was helping people track outages.
Ironically, tracking storm alerts through fast food store openings isn’t a new survivor technique. The reliable, cheap and almost-always-open breakfast chain Waffle House has a store opening tracker that uses a red, yellow, and green traffic light system to gauge the severity of a storm, predicting how difficult it will be for users to access power and food security.
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