A power company’s app couldn’t keep up after Hurricane Beryl, so Texans turned to a fast food chain to keep up with the power outages.

Dairy Queen may claim the name “blizzard,” referring to its blended ice cream. But a Texas fast-food chain has gained popularity thanks to its association with another extreme weather event.

Whataburger, a popular restaurant chain among Texans, became an unlikely source of information about power outages after Hurricane Beryl slammed into the region on Monday. The state’s main energy provider, CenterPoint Energy, saw so much traffic that its outage app had technical difficulties loading, forcing residents to find other ways to cope with the power outages and local business closures.

Bryan Norton, whose X-rated post about the app hack went viral, was able to determine the general trend of outages in the city by looking at which Whataburger locations were open. A map on the chain’s app showed orange logos for open locations and gray logos for closed stores. Norton has been without power for more than 27 hours and frequently checks various apps to find open businesses.

“It gives you hope because you’re not alone,” the 30-year-old Houston resident said. Fortune while waiting in line at his local Whataburger. “But it also shows how widespread this phenomenon is.”

Norton thought about using the Whataburger app to track outages while traveling home last week, when he and his wife stopped for coffee. Google Maps told him a Starbucks was open, but the Starbucks app told him it was closed, which turned out to be true.

It’s a small comfort to Texans hit by Monday’s Category 1 hurricane, which knocked out power to 2.5 million homes and killed eight people in Louisiana and Texas. As of Wednesday, more than 1.6 million homes in Houston and counties east of the city were still without power. The power outages are an even greater inconvenience and danger amid a massive heat wave that has pushed temperatures in Houston above 106 degrees.

CenterPoint has posted a map on its website showing where power has been restored and will replace its outage map with cloud-based data to accommodate increased traffic by the end of the month, CenterPoint spokesman Joshua Solis said. Fortune.

Whataburger plans to help with a food truck in the Houston area and will donate water to local shelters through the Red Cross. The company said it currently has 106 locations in the Houston metro area open for drive-thru service only.

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“We’re pleased that the Whataburger app has helped Houstonians understand where electricity is available in the city,” said Ed Nelson, Whataburger president and CEO. Fortune “Please keep in mind that the app should only be used to get a general idea of ​​electricity availability. We encourage residents to call local units to see if they are open and operating.”

Texans have made Whataburger a poster child for power outage awareness, in keeping with the American tradition of fast-food chains being at the center of disaster response. FEMA has long used the Waffle House Index to determine the intensity of natural disasters. If a Waffle House is open and serving its full menu, it probably has full power.

“What if you get there and the Waffle House is closed?” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. “That’s really bad. That’s where you’re going to work.”

The ‘energy capital of the world’ faces power outages

Hurricane Beryl is the third major outage Norton has faced this year, some due to extreme weather, others due to unusual accidents. The frequency of these outages has taught Norton and his fellow Texans to prepare for the worst.

“The lines at the gas stations are still a block long because people are out of gas for their generators,” he said, before hanging up so he could place his Whataburger order.

Texans have had to adapt to the onslaught of power outages that have hit the state. Since 2019, there have been 293 outages, each lasting about 160 minutes and affecting an average of 172,000 people, according to a 2024 report from Payless Power using data from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). That makes it the state with the most power outages in the country.

It’s not just hurricanes. In 2021, a winter storm dropped temperatures in Texas to record lows, lower than in parts of Alaska, and killed hundreds of people across the state. In June 2023, a tornado that tore through East Texas knocked out power to 200,000 buildings and destroyed 200 homes in the small town of Perryton.

There is some irony in that superlative. Houston has dubbed itself the “energy capital of the world,” home to 4,700 energy companies and employing a third of the nation’s oil and gas workers. The city has also come under fire for its overhead power lines, which are prone to collapse due to extreme weather.

“Our (electrical) infrastructure was built for the climate conditions of the past,” said Michael Webber, an engineering professor at the University of Texas. CNN“It was not built for the climate of the future, and the climate of the future is already here.”

The entire country is struggling with an outdated power grid: 70 percent of U.S. power lines built between the 1960s and 1970s are nearing the end of their life cycle. Extreme weather events are increasing, as are the vulnerabilities of a failing power grid, Webber warns.

Plans to bury power lines underground are slowly coming to fruition. In January, the Department of Energy announced $34 million in funding for 12 projects in 11 states to improve the grid. But such changes aren’t always popular. The undertaking is expensive, and a $5.9 billion project to bury lines to prevent wildfires in California ran into resistance from state regulators, who balked at the cost.

In Texas, infrastructure could be better prepared to handle hurricane-prone areas, Norton acknowledged, although he does not question the ability of residents to withstand storms.

“Texans come together and support each other,” he said. “And that’s what you have to do in the face of any type of disaster.”

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com