Storm lashes France, cargo ship runs aground (Reuters)

RENNES, France (Reuters) – Storm winds and torrential rain lashed France on Friday, cutting off electricity supplies to hundreds of thousands of homes and sending a cargo ship aground off the northwestern Brittany coast, where it sprang a fuel leak.

There were no reports of injuries as dozens of people were evacuated from flood-prone zones on the western Atlantic coast and 400,000 households were deprived of power, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.

Wind gusts of up to 130 kph pounded France's western coast in the early hours of Friday, causing a cargo ship headed for Malta, the 109-metre TK Bremen, to run aground off Brittany. The crew were rescued by helicopter.

French television showed footage of black fuel washing up on a sandy beach in Brittany, although the damage is expected to be limited because the leak was coming from one compartment in the ship's supply of fuel, police said.

Maritime authorities were planning to deploy equipment to contain a 1-km slick and empty the stricken ship's tanks of around more than 200 tons of fuel.

Early on Friday the storm's heart hung over the northernmost Pas-de-Calais region of France and was headed eastward in the direction of Belgium, according to the latest update from France's national weather service.

(Reporting by Pierre-Henri Allain in Rennes, Patrick Vignal, Gerard Bon and Bertrand Boucey in Paris; writing by Nicholas Vinocur; editing by Brian Love)

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Storm lashes southern Michigan, 30,000 without power (Reuters)

DETROIT (Reuters) – Residents of southern Michigan were cleaning up on Monday after a violent storm ripped through the region, leaving at least 30,000 people without power, authorities said.

The Sunday storm hit northern Illinois with heavy rains and lightning, canceling at least 400 flights at Chicago airports, before raking a stretch of southern Michigan from Kalamazoo to Detroit. No deaths or injuries were reported, officials said.

The storm's 60-mile-per-hour winds drove heavy rain, uprooted hundreds of trees, ripped the roofs off buildings, and twisted billboards in and around Battle Creek, a city of 50,000 about 120 miles west of Detroit.

"As of right now we are going around taking trees off of houses, clearing out roadways, and pushing all of the debris aside so emergency vehicles can get to people who need it," said Tyler Upston, 24, who owns a landscaping business in Battle Creek. "Tomorrow we will start the full clean up."

About 34,000 people were still without power in Battle Creek's Calhoun County on Monday and "a significant number of Michigan residents are without power throughout the area hit by the storm," said Bob Dukesherer, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

"The storm was racing and moving over 50 miles per hour at times and with that forward speed it comes up on you very quickly," Dukesherer said.

Upston was at a friend's lake house as the storm swept in.

"It looked like a huge blanket coming across the sky," Upston said. "The rain was coming harder than hard. Everything was kicking up. Scrubs and trees were flying everywhere. Lawn chairs were flying from one neighbor's house to another."

Skies on Monday were clear in the Midwest from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico as hot, humid air pushed temperatures into the low 90 degree range, forecasters said.

But they warned that conditions for possible severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes could return on Monday night in the central Plains and upper Midwest.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by Peter Bohan)

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