Storm Ciaran: wind gusts of 170 km/h recorded in Brittany, waves of eight to ten meters expected

2023-11-02 02:17:27

Stinging gusts began to shake the west of the country. Between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., a squall reached around 150 km/h on Pointe Saint-Mathieu. Storm Ciaran has started to increase in intensity over Brittany. According to La Chaîne Météo, a gust of wind even reached a speed of 170 km/h at Pointe du Raz (Finistère) in the evening, Wednesday evening.

In addition to the (provisional) record at Pointe du Raz, La Chaîne Météo reports other exceptional measurements with wind gusts reaching 148 km/h in Granville (Manche) and Pointe-Saint-Mathieu (Finistère) or even 143 km /h in Ouessant (Finistère). “The heart of the depression, pointed at 952 hPa, will pass closest to Brittany between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. with winds that can exceed 170 km/h,” La Chaîne Météo also specified, at the very end of the evening.

Three departments were placed on red alert for strong winds from midnight until 10 a.m. Thursday: Côtes-d’Armor, Finistère and Manche. But the orange alert was in effect from 8 p.m. for these three territories, as for Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Atlantique and Vendée. In total, thirty departments, including the western part of Île-de-France, will be on orange alert this Thursday for the risk of violent winds, waves-submersion or rain-flooding.

The winds which will hit Brittany could reach 170 km/h in gusts off the Breton tip and Cotentin in the following hours, Météo France indicated. Waves of eight to ten meters are expected on the Atlantic coast. The entire coastline from Pas-de-Calais to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques is now on orange wave-submersion alert for Thursday, as are Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Alpes-Maritimes. Southern Corsica is also on orange alert for thunderstorms as well as rain-flooding.

Tree falls

Almost everywhere on the coast, calls for caution, particularly for walkers and boaters, have increased. Due in particular to the risk of falling trees due to violent winds, the transport sector will operate slowly on Thursday in the west of the country. In addition to the winds, Météo France is concerned about a “rainy episode giving significant amounts of precipitation in a short time on already saturated soils”, with in particular possible falls of trees that are still very leafy.

“On the road front, we have taken measures via the prefectures to ban the circulation of heavy goods vehicles (…) This will be continued during the day (Thursday), particularly throughout the Brittany region,” said the Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune. The Brest and Quimper airports in particular “will not be in service” in the early morning, he added.

For trains, TER traffic in Brittany, Normandy, Hauts-de-France, Pays de la Loire and Centre-Val de Loire will be interrupted from Wednesday evening to Friday morning. As for the TGVs, if 90% of them should run, traffic will be interrupted on the Paris-Le Mans and Paris-Nantes axes. In the Paris region, the SNCF announced that it was planning “preventive stops of rail traffic” on Thursday morning on part of the RER A, several Transilien lines (L, J, U and partially N) and the T13 tram.