Storm Austen knocked out electricity to roughly 288,600 households across northwestern France by midday on Friday, according to the grid operator Enedis, as cited by BFM. The storm drove powerful gusts across the region, with the strongest reading so far reaching 160.6 km/h at Pointe du Raz in Brittany. Winds have already begun to ease in Finistère, but forecasters warned that the system was still moving along the Channel coast.
Why it matters
The outage figures make Austen one of the more disruptive weather events to hit the region this autumn, and the effects are spread across several areas at once. Enedis reported 148,500 affected homes in Brittany, 88,800 in Normandy, 49,600 in Pays de la Loire and 7,800 in Hauts-de-France. The operator described the situation as "still very changeable," suggesting the totals could shift as crews work and the storm moves on.
Beyond the power cuts, the storm has strained emergency services, closed major bridges and disrupted travel. Sixteen monthly wind records were matched or broken in the northwest, BFM reports, underlining how unusual the gusts were for October.
Wind readings and damage across the northwest
The highest gust recorded since the storm began was 160.6 km/h at Pointe du Raz, which BFM notes was not a monthly record but was the strongest wind of the event so far. Ouessant in Finistère recorded 158 km/h, and Pointe de Chemoulin in Loire-Atlantique reached 143 km/h. A gust of 131.4 km/h was logged at Ploumanac'h in Côtes-d'Armor.
Along the coast, Saint-Cast-Le-Guildo in Côtes-d'Armor recorded 135 km/h and Vinnemerville in Seine-Maritime reached 124 km/h. In the Manche department, 117 km/h was measured at Pointe de la Hague and 118 km/h at Gonneville. The port of Saint-Malo registered a gust of about 150 km/h, and national police there urged residents to avoid moving around on foot in the area.
Damage has been reported in several towns. In Caen, the city hall posted photos on Facebook showing fallen trees and other destruction. In Quimperlé, where a crisis management centre was activated, a tree came down directly onto a car and parts of the town remained without power. At Treffiagat in Finistère, a garden shed was blown away entirely, and in Saint-Malo the roof of the congress centre began to tear off.
The Finistère fire service reported 359 call-outs, including three traffic accidents. Three people were lightly injured in those crashes, at Plonévez-Porzay and Quimper. The prefecture said a broken pontoon at Camaret required the evacuation of three people. The regional health agency reported that two care homes for older people were without electricity, and the communes of Port-Launay and Collorec were entirely cut off.
In Seine-Maritime, firefighters said they carried out 52 storm-related operations between 1am and 11:45am, mostly involving downed power lines and trees blocking or threatening to fall on public roads, along with a few cases of minor flooding.
Transport closures and a warning to stay ashore
The Normandy prefecture closed the Normandy and Tancarville bridges to all traffic from 10am, after barring pedestrians and two-wheelers from 6am. The Brotonne bridge was set to close to all users from 10:30am.
The maritime prefecture for the Channel and North Sea described winds of force 8 to 9 on the Beaufort scale, with peaks at 10 out of 12, and called the conditions exceptional. It urged the greatest caution, particularly for leisure boaters, and asked people not to go out on the water under any circumstances. In Saint-Malo, fishermen were seen checking their moorings. One local fisherman, Franck, told BFMTV that no one was heading out to sea because conditions were too difficult.
In Finistère, 250 firefighters were deployed and had responded about 200 times by the time of the prefecture's update, mainly for fallen trees, torn roofs and obstacles on roads. The prefect reported two traffic accidents with no serious injuries and said many fallen trees were blocking roads. Between 50,000 and 70,000 homes in the department were without power at that stage, concentrated in the southeast.
The prefecture said the peak had passed in Finistère, where winds had dropped to between 80 and 90 km/h after reaching 158 km/h at the department's tip. Orange wind alerts for Finistère, Morbihan and Loire-Atlantique were lifted at 2pm and downgraded to yellow, with the Finistère alert ending at 2:30pm.
What to watch
Attention now turns to Normandy and the coastlines of Hauts-de-France, where strong gusts were still expected, and to a further spell of windy weather forecast for the weekend. Enedis's outage figures are likely to keep moving as the storm tracks east.
