Storm Ciaran whips western Europe, blowing record winds in France and leaving millions without power

Heavy rain associated with the storm pushed ashore at the southwest tip of England, and the UK's national weather forecaster warned of flood risks and urged people to take precautions. Dutch airline KLM scrapped all flights from the early afternoon until the end of the day, citing the high sustained wind speeds and powerful gusts expected in the Netherlands.

A weather-related death has already been confirmed in France. A truck driver was killed when his vehicle was hit by a tree in northern France's inland Aisne region, Transport Minister Clement Beaune said.

Nearly all coastlines of the French mainland were under severe weather warnings Thursday morning, from Calais on the English Channel to all the way down the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Spain, as well as much of France’s Mediterranean coast and Corsica, according to national weather service Météo-France.

The weather service reported record-breaking wind speeds of 180 kilometres per hour along the Brittany coast. The wind reached up to 160 kph on the Normandy coast and up to 150 kph inland. Waves of almost 10 metres were expected in the country’s northwestern tip.

Local trains were cancelled across a swath of western France, and all roads in the Finistere region of Brittany were closed Thursday morning. Beaune urged people to avoid driving and to at least exercise caution when travelling across areas with weather warnings.

‘’We see how roads can be fatal in these circumstances,’’ he told broadcaster France-Info.

The storm cut power to some 1.2 million French households as of Thursday morning, electrical utility Enedis announced in a statement. That includes about half of the homes in Brittany, the Atlantic peninsula hardest hit by Ciaran. Enedis said it would deploy