An unusually strong tornado tore through southwestern France, ripping up roofs and leaving dozens of people injured, the authorities said on Tuesday.
“A tornado of rare intensity struck Aude late yesterday afternoon,” Laurent Nuñez, the French interior minister, said on social media, referring to a prefecture in the Occitanie region.
The tornado arrived on Monday, battering towns and villages in the area, according to Météo-France, the national weather agency. At least 39 people were injured, two of whom were in critical condition, Emmanuelle Plantier-Lemarchand, secretary general of the Aude prefecture, said. The regional authorities issued a warning, but the direction had been hard to forecast, Ms. Plantier-Lemarchand told the French broadcaster Ici Occitanie.
“The phenomenon that struck us was an intense, violent and traumatic phenomenon, but it was difficult to predict,” Ms. Plantier-Lemarchand noted. While there were no reports of anyone missing, firefighters were combing the region for potential victims, the authorities said.
While tornadoes occur across France every year, particularly in the northwest and along the Mediterranean coasts, they are usually relatively weak and small. That also makes them hard to forecast. On Monday, Météo-France issued an orange alert, the second-highest warning, saying that conditions could lead to a “potential swirling phenomenon.” Wind up to 75 miles per hour, hail and thunderstorms had also been expected.
The town of Pomas, which has a population of about 1,000, suffered the worst of the tornado. Fifteen people were hospitalized and 300 homes there were damaged, the authorities said. Heeding the warnings, many residents had taken shelter in a community center, while others sought refuge with relatives or friends in neighboring towns.
“When the wind started picking up, we went to take cover, and then it was like machine-gun fire, roof tiles flying everywhere, rocks and everything,” one resident told the broadcaster France 2. The Pomas municipality urged residents to stay away from their homes as more than 120 firefighters worked to clear the wreckage.
The mayor of Pomas, Hervé Giné, told Ici Occitanie that it was a “true miracle” that the town had recorded no deaths.
“Yes, the material damage is very hard to take; it’s painful,” he added. “Some lost everything they had.”
The tornado knocked out power across 10 towns in the region, leaving about 2,800 households without electricity. By Tuesday, the power had been restored to around half of those homes.
Farther south, hail storms pelted riders competing in La Vuelta, a cross-country cycling race, forcing them to take shelter, organizers said. They added that Stage 3 of the race had been canceled because of extreme weather.
Nazaneen Ghaffar contributed reporting.