Storm Xynthia
March 2010
In the early hours of Sunday morning (1st March) we were awakened by the sound of hurricane winds battering the house.
We get quite a lot of high winds here so we are quite used to it but this was something different. It just seemed to get louder and louder and we thought the house was going to blow away! We could hear tiles coming of the roof and lots of crashing and banging. We were wondering what we were going to find when the morning came.
By early morning the electricity and phone were both down, thank goodness we have a gas hob at least we could have a cup of tea!
We were very lucky here as we only had a few tiles off the roofs and two trees uprooted. We believe the forest which is opposite us saved us from the full force of the wind. You can see from the photos below it just uprooted massive trees in the forest.
Further down in the Vendee region and in La Rochelle there was devastation. Boats were lifted out of the water in the harbour and roads and houses were destroyed. We consider ourselves quite lucky to have only been without electricity and phone for one day only as there were over a million homes without power.
Thank goodness you weren’t blown away!
— Mark Mar 7, 12:26 PM #