A Katrina-like winter storm tore through parts of Western Europe early Sunday morning, killing over 60 people. Most of the dead are from Atlantic coastal France, where ( Per Agence France-Presse) winter storm Xynthia's 93-mile-an-hour winds and 26-foot waves hit the coast so ferociously that they breached many of the region's aging sea levees.

Between around 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time on Sunday, the sea surged at least 1,600 feet inland. Streets were flooded so fast that many people didn't have time to escape before their homes were inundated.

So no more lonely hearts for us: France joins the USA in being an industrialized nation where some combination of factors -- politics, money, inertia, carelessness? -- has left a coastal population fatally vulnerable to extreme weather.

Carolyn Bucley of Persac, France wrote in to the BBC News on Sunday that she had "spent the whole evening from 2100 (9:00 pm) right through to 0800 this morning battening down anything that moved...[A]round us, many trees have been uprooted and some people have lost roof tiles. Though thankfully, in our region, there have been no injuries reported. But it was the worst storm I have ever encountered."

Reader Mike Jones wrote in from the French Pyrenees that "Bagneres de Luchon has been hit extremely hard...The town's ski resort, Superbagneres, was evacuated and today resembles a war zone. The town's parks are decimated with trees that have stood for 100 years being ripped out of the ground."

As of Tuesday's edition of The Toronto Star, a million French were without power, at least 51 were known dead, and rescue workers were still traveling in boats through dozens of underwater neighborhoors, trying to find survivors trapped in their homes:

About half the French death toll...was attributed to the breach of the sea wall off the coastal town of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer, known for its shellfish farms.

Floodwaters also submerged streets in L'Ile de Re, a chic resort island of colourful ports, charming cottages and bike paths. Broken-off concrete blocks from a shattered sea wall lay strewn about one of the island's beaches.

The spokesman for France's emergency services, Lt.-Col. Patrick Vailli, said nine people were still missing and scores more were wounded. Dozens of neighbourhoods were under water, and hundreds of houses were destroyed or damaged...

In the southwestern French town of La Faute-sur-Mer, firefighters evacuated stranded residents by boat Monday and car roofs just peeked out above the floodwaters

"We have to ask how in France, in the 21st century, families can be surprised in their sleep and drown in their homes," [French Prime Minister Nicholas] Sarkozy said.

Can the causes of any one storm be attributed to climate change? The scientifically precise answer is 'no, not at this point in time.'

We can look back now at temperature records collected over the past several decades, and see the distinct and unusual rise in the global mean temperature. In a decade or two we'll be able to look back and see if a pattern of more extreme storms was established over the early 21st century.

With this due degree of uncertainly established, it's worth remembering that extreme storms like Katrina and now Xynthia have been anticipated in climate change research. One likely reason is that as the global mean temperature rises, more moisture evaporates off the surface of the ocean into the atmosphere. Extra moist is great for cake, but it's problematic in terms of weather, since hurricanes and cyclones draw power from warm moisture in the air. As Discovery News' John Cox writes about Xynthia,

What gave the storm such destructive power and such prodigious rains was the confluence of two strikingly different air masses -- a wave of cold, relatively dry air that is typical of the North Atlantic and a massive, concentrated flow of unusually warm moisture from the Tropics.

Piled up against the African coast in the eastern Atlantic is a wedge of sea surface temperatures that are roughly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average that is spread all the way to South America. This North Atlantic storm formed far enough south to entrain this plume of extra warm moisture. The southwest-to-northeast trajectory of this plume suggests what researchers have been calling an "atmospheric river," a tropical firehose that is capable of causing flooding just about anywhere it hits the ground.

Tropical meteorologist Jeff Masters, in his Weather Underground blog on the subject, notes that "total precipitable water" in this plume was up to 300 percent above average.

Another Katrina flashback: It was the human factor that made Xynthia so lethal. The sea walls meant to protect these French towns failed because they were "too low, in severe disrepair, or reportedly dating from the era of Napoleon," according to Associated Press reporters.

And then there's over-development in flood zones: "[Observers] also cite the new houses cropping up behind them, tantalizingly close to the country's poorly protected but much beloved shoreline."

Image: "L'Aiguillon, Vendée, tempête Xynthia, 01/03/2010". Via Planete Vivant (Marie Sophie) on flickr