September 10th Paris Ephemeris: Tornado wreaks havoc in the heart of Paris

On Thursday September 10, 1896, a natural and meteorological event of unprecedented magnitude and violence tore through the streets of Paris. This tornado, the first and last to pass through Paris, caused extensive material damage and the death of five people as it passed between Place Saint-Sulpice and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

Paris and the Ile-de-France region had already been hit by violent storms for several weeks, culminating on July 26, 1896 in a particularly severe hailstorm that affected the Montsouris and Belleville districts, as well as the Bois de Vincennes and the Bois de Boulogne. The storm uprooted trees, ravaged flowerbeds, ripped off roofs and smashed shop windows; tramway traffic was disrupted by tree trunks falling onto the pavement.

Two Parisian women, an eleven-year-old girl and a woman in her twenties, lost their lives, the first in the collapse of a washhouse in the 13th arrondissement, the second from a fall from the top of the fortifications at Porte d'Ivry. But what Parisians thought would be the climax of the bad weather ofsummer 1896 was not, in fact, reached.

On September 10, 1896, just before 3 p.m., Paris was once again hit by a storm, but this one quickly took a far more terrifying and dramatic turn than its predecessors. In the heart of the 6th arrondissement, between the northern Luxembourg Gardens and Place Saint-Sulpice, a tornado formed before the astonished eyes of onlookers.

With gusts of up to 220km/h, this tornado, rated EF2 on the Fujita scale, is moving in a straight line towards the north of the capital, through the 6th, 1st, 3rd, 10th and 19th arrondissements. It crosses the Place Saint-Sulpice, takes the Quai des Grands-Augustins , where trees are uprooted and books are scattered to the four winds, crosses the Seine, where several damaged barges sink, and reaches the west of theIle de la Cité via the Pont-au-Change.

On the right bank, the tornado, with an average width of 300 meters, continued on its devastating path, reaching the Place du Châtelet, where it tore the roof off the theater, passed in front of the Saint-Jacques tower, where it decapitated a gargoyle, and climbed up the Rue Réaumur, then the Rue de Turbigo, before reaching the Place de la République. But the phenomenon doesn't stop there!

It then headed for boulevard Saint-Martin, boulevard de Magenta and the canal Saint-Martin, where a woman and her child were thrown into the water. The tornado finally ended its run on boulevard de la Villette, passing through the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, but not before wreaking havoc on a nearby funfair.

In just 3 to 4 minutes, the column crossed Paris from southwest to northeast, covering 6.3 kilometers and wiping out everything in its path. Chestnut, elm and plane trees were smashed, roofs and lampposts were torn off, and an omnibus was even lifted up and overturned on the sidewalk by the force of the wind, as were numerous carriages.

But material damage was not the only misfortune to be deplored: almost 70 Parisians were seriously injured and 5 even lost their lives, dying of contusions and skull fractures, including an English jockey named Eyears, a 30-year-old coachman, Jean Portal, ejected from his carriage, Léon Vanderhagle, a day laborer crushed by a 300kg lead plate that fell from a roof, or overturned, depending on the version, on Boulevard Magenta, or Antoine Rouché, a 5-year-old boy, lifted by the force of the wind and thrown against the Pont-au-Change parapet.

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The very next day, the municipality organized a clean-up of the streets of Paris and set aside 10,000 francs for the victims' funerals, while the newspapers seized on the subject and collected statements from those who had witnessed the phenomenon. Headlines that must have surprised many Parisians!

In fact, despite its violence, the tornado affected only a tiny part of the capital. Le Figaro expressed its surprise in its September 11, 1896 edition: "The curious thing is that during this time, in Montmartre, in the ninth arrondissement, on the Champs-Elysées, on the Champ-de-Mars, no one suspected that a terrible cyclone was wreaking havoc in Paris. It rained, and that was that. By four o'clock, the cyclone had passed. The sky was clearing. The rain stopped completely.

The tornado of September 10, 1896 is the one and only known tornado in thehistory of the capital, but also the only case of a tornado in France to have occurred in an exclusively urban environment, from its formation to its dissipation.

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