The country’s weather agency Météo France recorded 70,000 different lightning strikes across the storm-hit areas overnight on Tuesday.

And the extreme weather is not over yet with seven departments still on orange alert – the second highest warning level, with more storms forecast.

The storms left their mark with homes from the Pyrennees in the south west right up to Brittany in the north west hit by power cuts.

Homes across the Pays de la Loire, Aude, and Dordogne were also hit. In the department of Gironde some 23,000 homes saw power cut by the storms, many of which were around the Bordeaux area.