Five people, including a teenage girl, have died in Corsica, with two others in critical condition, after a violent and unexpected storm battered the Mediterranean island with hurricane-force winds.

Heavy rain, hail and winds peaking at 224 kilometers per hour pummelled the French island, a popular tourist destination, on Thursday – leaving around 45,000 households without electricity.

"There was no warning... I don't feel scared, just stupefaction. No one expected this," said Yolhan Niveau, 24, a wildlife photographer from Brittany staying at a campsite near San-Nicolao, on the island's north-east.

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He said the storm had torn through the site, felling trees and causing damages to the mobile homes. As the clouds raged across France, which had been in one of its severest droughts in decades - many areas experienced more rain in a few hours than in recent months combined.

In southern Corsica at another campsite, a 13-year-old girl was killed by a falling tree, while and a 72-year-old woman died when her car was struck by a beach hut roof, authorities said.

The third victim, a 46-year old Frenchman, was killed when a tree fell on a campsite bungalow. A 23-year old Italian woman was injured at the same location and taken to hospital in critical condition.

A fisherman in Girolata in Corse-du-Sud and a kayakist in Erbalunga in Haute-Corse were also later reported dead. 

Weather forecaster Meteo France said the island was hit by "violent thunderstorms with strong tornado-like gusts... causing significant damage."

With predicting the exact location of such weather events proving to be difficult, Meteo France had not given advance warning that there would be such a strong storm on Corsica. It issued an alert with "immediate effect" in the morning as strong winds were already hitting the island.

Meteo France subsequently lifted the major storm warning, indicating the worst had passed for the island.

On France's mainland, grid operator Enedis said about 1,000 households were still without power after a storm hit the southern Loire and Ain departments, while on Wednesday evening in Marseille, streets were flooded and streams of water running down steps in the port city were captured on video.