Two people have been killed and 17 injured during torrential storms in France on Wednesday night.
According to French media, a falling tree killed a 12-year-old child in south-west France and a man died when his quad bike hit a toppled tree in the north west.
The storm toppled trees, flooded Parisian streets, cut power to thousands of homes and even caused the roof of the country’s parliament to spring a leak as Prime Minister François Bayrou was speaking.
Here is everything we know about the floods in the country so far.
Where are the floods in France?
Although the storm – with its winds and lightning strikes – seems to have hit most of the country, the rainfall seems to have been focussed in the northeast of France and Paris.
Flash flooding particularly occurred in Champagne and Picardy in the north, destroying crops which were about to be harvested.
The storms, which progressed northwards from the Pyrenees to Normandy, inflicted damage to farms, properties and city centres. Hail and flash flooding was seen in Paris which appeared to get the worst of the damage as far as the flooding went.
Torrential rain and 75mph winds hit the Paris region, leading to roads being inundated with rainwater and thousands left stuck.
The entire country has been ravaged by the storms which began on Wednesday night (June 25) over the whole of France with a total of 39,000 lighting strikes recorded over France and Belgium.
Météo-France, the national weather service, said the storms were triggered by “a combination of a heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 40C in parts of the southeast, and atmospheric instability driven by a cold drop and upper-air trough”.
These conditions fuelled powerful “super cells” which produce intense lightning. Supercells are large-scale, highly organised storms with a rotating updraft that can sustain themselves for several hours and travel hundreds of miles.
Some areas were hit more from the heavy winds than others, but on the whole the entire country has been affected.
In the southwest, hailstones which were allegedly “up to the size of tennis balls” caused destruction in the Basque country and the Landes, Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne départements.
The national farmers’ union said the damage was extensive in the Massif Central region, particularly the western Corrèze département and have appealed for state compensation, saying: “Acres have been ravaged, animals killed, farm buildings damaged. The losses are heavy and some people are hugely shocked.”
How long will they continue for?
It is believed the worst is over in France now, but the clean up operation has barely begun in the country with millions of pounds worth of damage reported.
The UK was put on high alert for storms and bad weather over today (Thursday June 26) and Friday (June 27) amid fears the tailed could hit our shores.