Recording-breaking winds up to 190 kph – some of the highest in decades – slammed France’s Atlantic coast Thursday as Storm Ciaran lashed the UK and countries around western Europe, cancelling flights and trains, uprooting trees, blowing out windows and causing travel mayhem around the region.
Strong winds and rain battered southern England and the Channel Islands, where gusts of more than 160 kph were reported. Hundreds of schools stayed closed in the coastal communities of Cornwall and Devon as downed trees and flooding hindered morning commutes.
Flights from airports on the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were cancelled. Dutch airline KLM scrapped all flights leaving and arriving in the Netherlands from the early afternoon until the end of the day, citing the high sustained wind speeds and powerful gusts expected in the country.
Storm-related fatalities were recorded in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Described as a “once-in-every-few-years storm for the U.K. and France,” nearly all coastlines of the French mainland were under severe weather warnings Thursday from Calais on the English Channel to all the way down the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Spain, as well as much of France’s Mediterranean coast and Corsica, according to national weather service Météo-France.
The weather service reported record-breaking wind speeds of 180 kph along the Brittany coast. Waves of almost 10 metre were expected in the country’s northwestern tip.
Local trains were cancelled across a swath of western France, and people were urged to avoid driving and to at least exercise caution when traveling across areas with weather warnings. Over a million people were left without power.
In the UK, transportation agencies also advised residents in parts of southern England to stay home and not travel. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency urged people to keep away from the coast.
“Stay out of dangerous situations,’’ the agency said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. ‘’A selfie in stormy conditions isn’t worth risking your life for.’’
The Met Office, the government weather agency, issued amber warnings for high winds for parts of southern England. An amber warning is the second highest level of alert, meaning there is a danger to life from flying debris.
The storm produced more than travel misery in the Netherlands. The eighth edition of the national headwind cycling championship was swiftly organized for riders prepared to pedal into the teeth of the storm Thursday along an 8.5-km coastal barrier on bikes with no gears.
The event is only held when a southwesterly storm with a minimum of wind force seven barrels up the North Sea coast, but the winds were so strong that a permit was denied. Organizer Robrecht Stoekenbroek said he was “super disappointed.”