Two people reported missing after a tornado struck the southern French village of Pomas have been found alive under the rubble of a house.
Rescuers pulled the pair out with light injuries on the morning of August 25, ending an overnight search of a collapsed home in the Aude department, in the Occitanie region.
The tornado hit at about 5.20pm on August 24 in Pomas, a commune of around 1,000 people between Carcassonne and Limoux.
Carcassonne sub-prefect Emmanuelle Plantier-Lemarchand said 39 people had been injured, about 15 of them taken to hospital without serious harm, and that nobody was unaccounted for. An earlier count issued by the prefecture of the Aude had put the number of injured at 41.
Around 300 homes were damaged, with roofs torn away and upper floors destroyed. Some 600 of the village’s residents were evacuated and emergency shelters were opened at the Pomas community hall and at Limoux, further south.
Rescuers had checked more than 200 of the affected properties by the morning of August 25, the prefecture said, warning that several departmental roads remained closed because of fallen trees.
More than 115 firefighters were deployed, among them 14 urban search and rescue specialists and a dog team. Gendarmes patrolled overnight to secure damaged houses.
Météo-France recorded gusts of 117 kilometres per hour at Arquettes-en-Val and 106 at Lézignan-Corbières, along with more than 30mm of rain in an hour at Castelnaudary. Forecasters logged 321 lightning strikes west of Carcassonne and hailstones measuring 5cm.
Grid operator Enedis said 1,600 households across the Aude were still without power on the morning of August 25, down from about 2,800 the previous evening. The orange thunderstorm warning for the department was lifted at 7pm on August 24.
Storms elsewhere in the south delayed trains and closed roads and caused disruption at airports including Bordeaux, Marseille, Nice and Toulouse, transport minister Philippe Tabarot said.
The destruction adds to a summer of extreme weather in the French south, where France activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism twice in July to secure aerial firefighting aircraft. The Aude lost thousands of hectares in August 2025 to the largest single wildfire France had seen in more than half a century.
France records dozens of tornadoes a year, most of them weak and short-lived, according to the French storm observatory Keraunos. Researchers say the influence of a warming climate on their frequency and intensity remains unclear.
