PHOTO- A truck lies on its side during strong winds brought by Storm Nils near Leucate in southwestern France on February 12, 2026. © Ed Jones, AFP
Two people have been killed in southern France as Storm Nils swept through the region. Some 450,000 households in the country’s south were still without power as of Friday morning.
Around 450,000 households in southern France were without power on Friday, operator Enedis said, a day after a storm tore through the region, ripping up trees and flooding roads.
High winds and hard rain brought chaos across southern France, northern Spain and parts of Portugal on Thursday, forcing cancellations of flights, trains and ferries and disruption on roads.
French officials said a truck driver was killed when a tree smashed through his windscreen, while dozens were injured in weather-related incidents in Spain and a viaduct in Portugal partially collapsed because of flooding.
Another person died from falling off a ladder in their garden in France’s Tarn-et-Garonne region, government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said Friday.
In Spain, officials said a woman died after the roof of an industrial warehouse collapsed on her.
French forecasters said the storm, named Nils, was “unusually strong” and France’s electricity distributor said it had mobilised around 3,000 as it battled to reconnect households to the grid.
“Enedis has restored service to 50 percent of the 900,000 customers who were without electricity,” it wrote around 6am (0500 GMT).
“Flooding complicates repairs because the fields are waterlogged and some roads are blocked,” Enedis crisis director Herve Champenois said during a press briefing on Thursday.
Storm Nils comes on the heels of three other episodes of extreme weather which caused severe flooding, claimed several lives and forced the evacuation of thousands of people in Spain and Portugal.
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Residents across the south of France were shocked at the storm’s ferocity.
“During the night, you could hear tiles lifting, rubbish bins rolling down the street – it was crazy,” said Eugenie Ferrier, 32, from the village of Roaillan near Bordeaux in the southwest.
Forecasters said the storm had moved eastwards away from French territory during Thursday, though some areas were still on alert for flooding.
Scientists say the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is due to climate change linked to rising greenhouse gas emissions.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
