Some 450,000 households in southern France were without power on Friday, operator Endis said, a day after a storm ripped through the region, uprooting trees and flooding roads.
Waves crash in front of The Parata Genovese Tower near Ajaccio, French Mediterranean island of Corsica, on February 12, 2026, after storm blue winds swept across France, Spain and Portugal, causing power outages. (AFP)Strong winds and heavy rain caused chaos across southern France, northern Spain and parts of Portugal on Thursday, causing cancellations of flights, trains and ferries and disruption to roads.
French officials said a truck driver died after a tree smashed through his windscreen, while dozens were injured in weather-related incidents in Spain and a viaduct partially collapsed due to flooding in Portugal.
French forecasters said the storm, named Niles, was “unusually strong” and France’s electricity distributor said it had stranded around 3,000 people as it struggled to reconnect households to the grid.
“NDIS has restored service to 50 percent of the 900,000 customers who were without power,” it wrote at 6:00 a.m. (0500 GMT).
“Flooding complicates repairs because fields are flooded and some roads are blocked,” Enidis Crisis Director Herve Champagne said at a press briefing Thursday.
Residents across the south of France were shocked by the storm’s ferocity.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ingrid, a florist in the town of Perpignan, told AFP. “A tree almost fell on my car – another two seconds and that would be it.”
“At night, you could hear tiles being lifted, rubbish being thrown on the street — it was crazy,” said Eugenie Ferrier, 32, from the village of Roellan, in the southwest, near Bordeaux.
Forecasters said the storm had moved eastward from French territory by Thursday, though some areas were still on alert for flooding.
