By Romain Gutkind and Ruth Wright with AFP Published 08/24/2026 – 22:01 GMT+2 • Updated 08/25/2026 – 08:49 GMT+2 A tornado ripped through a town in southwestern France on Monday (August 24), injuring 41 people and damaging hundreds of homes. ADVERTISING ADVERTISING The tornado hit the town of Pomas, with 1,000 inhabitants, located between Carcassonne and Limoux, the hardest. It damaged about 300 homes, and in some cases ripped off their roofs. “More than 120 firefighters are on site” and reinforcements are expected from neighboring departments, according to the prefecture of the Aude department, which added that “operations are underway to secure the buildings.” Among the injured was a pregnant woman who was injured when her house collapsed on her, her husband told AFP. Videos published on social networks show a powerful wind vortex that runs through several communities in the department under a stormy sky. The national weather service, Méteo-France, said winds had reached up to 117 kilometers (73 miles) per hour in the nearby town of Arquettes-en-Val. Aude: Tornado in France French authorities had placed areas of the country’s southwest on orange alert for storms, and numerous areas were affected by power outages and transportation chaos. In Aude, authorities canceled the third stage of the Vuelta a España that was taking place in the area, when a hail storm forced cyclists to seek shelter. Storms in southern France disrupted the transportation network, delaying trains, forcing road closures and causing delays and cancellations at airports in Bordeaux, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and even Paris to the north, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said. In France, an average of dozens of tornadoes occur per year. According to Méteo-France, the impact of global warming on its frequency and intensity is unclear. At 7:30 p.m., 2,800 homes were still without electricity in a dozen municipalities in the Aude.
