Pendant la tempête, les essuie-glaces de la voiture faisaient trop de bruit.

Here, pendant means during.

So Pendant la tempête = During the storm.

Yes, durant is also possible in many cases:

• Pendant la tempête
• Durant la tempête

Both are correct, but pendant is very common and natural in everyday French. Durant can sound a little more formal or written, depending on context.

La tempête refers to a specific storm, not just any storm.

French often uses the definite article when the situation is understood or identifiable:

• Pendant la tempête = during the storm

If you said pendant une tempête, it would mean during a storm, in a more general or less specific way.

Les essuie-glaces means the windshield wipers or the windscreen wipers.

It is a compound noun:

• essuie- comes from essuyer = to wipe
• glaces here refers to the glass surfaces

So the idea is literally something like glass-wipers, though in normal English you would just say windshield wipers.

The singular is:

• un essuie-glace

The plural is:

• des essuie-glaces

In this compound noun, the first part essuie- does not change, and the second part takes the plural -s.

So:

• un essuie-glace
• les essuie-glaces

That is the standard spelling.

French often expresses possession with de:

• les essuie-glaces de la voiture = the car's wipers / the wipers of the car

This is especially common when the possessor is a thing rather than a person.

You could sometimes use a possessive in French, but here de la voiture is very natural because it clearly identifies which wipers we mean.

Faisaient is the imparfait (imperfect tense) of faire.

The imperfect is used for things that were:

• ongoing
• habitual
• background actions or descriptions in the past

So in this sentence, the wipers were making too much noise during the storm. The noise is presented as an ongoing situation, not as one single completed event.

That is why faisaient works well here.

Because the subject is plural:

• les essuie-glaces = the wipers

In the imperfect, faire changes like this:

• je faisais
• tu faisais
• il/elle faisait
• nous faisions
• vous faisiez
• ils/elles faisaient

Since les essuie-glaces is a plural subject, French uses faisaient.

In normal modern French, faisait and faisaient are pronounced the same.

So:

• il faisait
• ils faisaient

sound alike.

This is very common in French: spelling often shows singular vs. plural more clearly than pronunciation does. You usually know which one it is from the subject.

Faire du bruit is the normal French expression for to make noise.

So:

• Les essuie-glaces faisaient du bruit = The wipers were making noise

This is just the idiomatic way French says it. French does not usually use a direct equivalent of to noise here; it uses faire + bruit.

After expressions of quantity like trop de, French uses de, not du.

So you say:

• beaucoup de bruit = a lot of noise
• trop de bruit = too much noise
• un peu de bruit = a little noise

That is why the sentence has:

• faisaient trop de bruit

not trop du bruit.

Yes. You could also say:

Les essuie-glaces de la voiture faisaient trop de bruit pendant la tempête.

That means the same thing.

Putting Pendant la tempête at the beginning gives the time setting first, which is very natural. The comma helps separate that introductory phrase from the rest of the sentence.