Six people died on Friday when hurricane-strength winds lashed Paris and large areas of northern and eastern France, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes and disrupting air, rail and road traffic.
Gusts of up to 130kph blew through the region, prompting the national weather service, Meteo France, to issue its second-highest alert and warning against people using their cars.
State electricity company EDF said about 385 000 homes — 200 000 of them in Normandy north-west of Paris and in the north-eastern Pas-de-Calais region — were without power, and emergency services received thousands of calls because of falling trees, branches and downed power lines.
Late on Friday, about 200 000 homes were still in the dark.
Most of those killed were victims of falling trees. A 61-year-old woman was killed in a western Paris neighbourhood when a tree came crashing down on her car, police said, while a motorcyclist was also hit and died in the capital.
In the Somme region of north-eastern France, a man was killed by a falling tree and two men died while they were out walking in the north.
Meanwhile an unidentified man aged 28 was killed when he fell off a roof he was repairing in a western Parisian suburb after a piece of metal sheeting he was standing on came loose.
In the capital, Paris, parks, cemeteries, gardens and the Eiffel Tower were closed as the famed symbol was buffeted by massive gusts — and skating rinks on the tower, outside City Hall and in front of the Montparnasse train station were shuttered.
The main Paris airports of Charles de Gaulle and Orly were also hit, prompting 25 cancellations and delays of up to an hour-and-a-half on dozens of other flights. Airport authorities later said that services were gradually returning to normal by late Friday.
Rail service, however, was more seriously affected.
Many trains in northern France were brought to a standstill, with delays hitting commuters with aggravating one- to three-hour delays on their way home for the weekend, and a few delays hitting the Thalys high-speed service to Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany as well as the Eurostar train to London.
A train linking Paris with Frankfurt with nearly 500 passengers on board was blocked in the Moselle area after several electricity pylons fell on to the tracks, the state rail company SNCF said, and two other regional trains had also been stranded.
SNCF said it expected the delays to continue into Saturday, with train services returning to normal by midday.
The Chateau of Versailles was also shut and visitors were evacuated. The property is still recovering from a 1999 Christmas storm that uprooted more than 10 000 trees on its grounds — a storm that caused major damage notably to forests across much of northern and eastern France.
In Normandy, a high motorway bridge spanning the Seine river was buffeted by winds that knocked over a truck and a caravan, without causing injuries. Officials temporarily closed the structure after the incidents.
Falling trees also injured the occupants of cars in two communities south-west of Paris and in northern France, while another man was seriously injured when he was hit in the face by the door to his home as he opened it. — Sapa-AFP