When Storm Ciaran arrived on France’s Atlantic coast early Thursday, it brought winds of up to 118 miles per hour - the equivalent power of a Category 3 hurricane.
The violent winds battered homes and businesses, knocking out windows and tearing down trees, causing chaos in western France and Great Britain. According to French authorities, 1.2 million people were without power in the country on Thursday, including half of all homes in Brittany, France’s westernmost province which sits on a peninsula. One gust of wind in Finistère was clocked at 129 miles per hour.
At least two people in France have died during the storm, including a truck driver and an elderly man who fell from his balcony in Normandy.
The storm has also battered northern Spain, where heavy rains and gale-force winds had a similar destructive effect, killing at least one person. In Belgium, two more have been reported killed in the storm, along with one person in Germany and one in the Netherlands. Hundreds more have been reported injured by the storm across Western Europe.
However, the storm’s eye passed over southern England and Wales, where the fierce winds sparked tornado watches, with at least one striking Jersey, one of the islands in the English Channel. More than 127,000 were without power in the UK, but widespread flooding had effectively shut down most forms of transportation. UK media quoted one resident as saying the scale of destruction was “like a disaster movie.”
Washed ashore boats may on the sand on the beach of Pornichet, Brittany, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Winds up to 180 kilometers per hour (108 mph) slammed the French Atlantic coast overnight along with violent rains and huge waves, as Storm Ciaran uprooted trees, blew out windows.
© AP Photo / Jeremias Gonzalez
A man saws a tree that fell on a parking lot Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023 in Hasparren, southwestern France. Winds up to 180 kilometers per hour (108 mph) slammed the French Atlantic coast overnight along with violent rains and huge waves, as Storm Ciaran uprooted trees, blew out windows and left 1.2 million households without electricity.
© AP Photo / Bob Edme
By late Thursday, Ciaran had significantly weakened and its center was over the North Sea, on track to pass through the Skagerrak and hit southwestern Sweden.