South France tornado injures 39 as unsettled weather approaches Belgium

Updated 25 August 2026, 18:30 CEST — A tornado struck Pomas in France’s Aude department at about 17:20 on Monday 24 August, injuring 39 people and damaging around 300 homes, according to the Associated Press and local authorities. Emergency crews continued checking unstable buildings on Tuesday, while no residents were reported missing.

The Associated Press reported that 20 people were taken to hospital and none remained in critical condition by Tuesday evening. Emergency accommodation was opened for displaced residents. About 1,400 households across Aude were still without electricity on Tuesday morning, while the village school was partially destroyed.

The tornado formed during a wider episode of violent thunderstorms across southern France. Reuters reported that the storm followed an intense heatwave and that more than 300 homes were damaged. Météo-France told the Associated Press that mainland France records several dozen tornadoes each year, most of them weak.

The immediate Belgian outlook is unsettled, but fundamentally different. The Royal Meteorological Institute forecasts warmer weather on Wednesday, followed on Thursday by showers and thunderstorms arriving from France. Some showers will be intense and produce high local rainfall totals, the institute says. Cooler, changeable weather with further showers is forecast from Friday into the weekend.

That forecast does not amount to evidence that Belgium should brace for a tornado like the one in Pomas. Tornadoes are highly local phenomena requiring instability, strong rising air and changes in wind speed or direction with altitude. Belgium’s weather institute says an average of three to five tornado-type vortices develop in the country annually, while waterspouts occur more often over the warm North Sea between August and October.

Belgium nevertheless has its own history of destructive tornadoes. The institute records that a powerful tornado crossed Oostmalle on 25 June 1967, destroying or severely damaging hundreds of buildings without causing deaths in Belgium.

The practical message is therefore narrower than a prediction of a stormy autumn. Residents should follow province-level warnings from the Royal Meteorological Institute during Thursday’s thunderstorms and avoid treating one exceptional French event as a seasonal forecast. Beyond the current two-week outlook, the severity and frequency of Belgium’s autumn storms remain unknown.