Charente
Charente (; Saintongese: ''Chérente''; ) is a department in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. It is named after the river Charente, the most important and longest river in the department, and also the r ...
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
.
Geography
The river Vienne passes through Chabanais. The village is located in the
Rochechouart impact structure
Rochechouart impact structure or Rochechouart astrobleme is an impact structure in France. Erosion has over the millions of years mostly destroyed its impact crater, the initial surface expression of the asteroid impact, leaving highly deformed ...
. The ancient asteroid impact crater associated with it has
eroded
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is disti ...
away and is no longer visible. Located in the heart of the Charente, Chabanais is 42 km west of Limoges, 50 km northeast of Angoulême, 77 km north of Périgueux, and 84 km southeast of Poitiers.
The town is small enough to be considered a large village, and it boasts an open-air market every Thursday, adding to a number of small, privately owned shops. The town has a rail station connecting with Limoges to the east and Angoulême to the west.
tornado
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...
on 5 May 1997. In the summer of 2018, the town centre and some surrounding hamlets were struck by a devastating hailstorm which punctured many roofs on buildings and destroyed hundreds of car windscreens and bodywork.