Sandrine Prioul and Caroline Baudry, edited by Antoine Terrel 2:32 p.m., October 21, 2021, modified at 2:33 p.m., October 21, 2021

Thursday noon, after the passage of the Aurora storm overnight, some 120,000 homes were still without electricity, while train traffic gradually resumed in northern France.

In Finistère, a mini-tornado devastated everything over a strip of three kilometers. 

REPORTING

Very bad weather swept through the northern half of the country, causing major disturbances. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the Aurora storm caused several hundred incidents on the entire national rail network, and caused unprecedented material damage, especially in the great west. Some 120,000 homes were without electricity Thursday noon.

Thus, in Brittany, the wind blew particularly strong, in particular in Plozévet, in Finistère, where a mini-tornado devastated everything on a strip of 3 kilometers wide of a hundred meters. Result: the house that was in its path is on the ground. The town's cemetery is damaged and the trees are not simply uprooted, but are twisted, says Mayor Gilles Kérézéon. "It came crescendo for half an hour, and above all, it was extremely violent as the mini-tornado passed," he describes. "It's spinning. It was raining practically horizontally and you have the leaves rising towards the sky. We are dealing with more and more violent phenomena, more and more rapid, and it was quite impressive", continues the 'elected.

3,000 technicians urgently deployed

And the repercussions of the storm are still being felt, in Plozévet and elsewhere in Brittany, where tens of thousands of homes are deprived of electricity.

It is further north, in Normandy and even in Hauts-de-France, that the electrical installations are the most damaged.

According to Enedis, it was necessary to deploy 3,000 technicians in an emergency.

But more than half of the 250,000 homes deprived of electricity in the morning "have already been resupplied". 

Rail traffic also remains very complicated, mainly because it will be necessary to clear many tracks throughout the day.

Regional public transport, especially in the various regions north of the Loire, have also been seriously disrupted, as in Ile-de-France.

Major disruptions were recorded on most of the RER lines and trains passing through Saint-Lazare station in the morning.

But the majority are now operating almost normally "with some still difficult points in the process of clearing, particularly in the Pontoise area, north of line D in the Val d'Oise and Paris-Crepy".

The resumption is "envisaged around 5 p.m.", specifies the SNCF.

Circulation improves

"The 7.46 am train has not passed. There is a 1h10 delay and the 8.46 am train has been canceled. I will take more than two and a half hours ...", moaned this morning Naïma, crossed at the Gare de Lyon. "I know that in France, unfortunately, as soon as there is bad weather, it is always very complicated in public transport."

More generally, traffic is improving in the most affected regions (Normandy, Hauts-de-France, Ile-de-France, Lorraine and Champagne-Ardennes), SNCF told AFP at midday.

TGV traffic was not affected by the storm.

In Normandy, traffic remains interrupted on certain axes "the time to recognize all the tracks on the lines", specifies the railway group.

The Caen-Paris and Deauville-Paris lines were to resume around 5 p.m. and Le Havre / Rouen / Paris and Paris-Granville around 2 p.m. In Hauts-de-France, the Paris-Amiens line resumed but Paris-Laon will have to wait until 6 p.m. .