Satellite pic courtesy Meteo.fr
Depending on where you are in the world you may or may not have heard of the storm that hit the French coast on Saturday night (27th) and blew diagonally up through the country towards Belgium.
This is quite a difficult post to write. I said I would do a blog about French life for real and usually that’s a lot of fun but not this time. We got off relatively lightly – we have some roof and garden buildings damage but it’s all insured – and it’s nothing when you consider that nearly 50 have died, a couple of dozen are still missing and many more are injured. This morning there are still hundreds of thousands without electricity – at the worst it was over a million.
The storm was severe enough to get it’s own name – Xynthia. I knew hurricanes got names but I didn’t think ordinary storms did. Not that this was “ordinary”. 100mph+ winds when it hit the coast and floods up to roof level.
The Vendee and Charente Maritime regions were the worst hit. As the storm went north east it got less severe. We’re in the Centre region and although it was a very unpleasant night – and some areas still have no electricity – damage is mainly roofs and barns. Not nice, but hopefully people will have had them insured and it can all be fixed eventually. As far as I know nobody around here has been seriously injured.
If you want more detail there’s plenty on news sites, just do a search for French storms or Xynthia. Me, I’ve already contacted the roofer, now I need to call my insurance company.
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