Extra clean up crews are being sent to Victoria’s south-west to assist with a backlog of trees down and building damage after severe wind and rain last night.
State Emergency Service Victorian commander Mark Cattell said on Saturday that while severe conditions impacted much of the state overnight, Warrnambool and Portland teams were in need of help.
“We’ve got extra crews coming down to assist with them,” he said.
In the past 24 hours, the SES has received about 1,400 requests for assistance.
About 800 of those have been about fallen trees, Mr Cattell said.
He said the windy conditions were forecast to move eastwards across Gippsland in the next few hours.
About one-third of the Victorian SES call-outs overnight were in the Barwon South-West region, which extends along the coast from Geelong to the South Australian border.
Wind gusts of 102 km/h were recorded in Warrnambool.
The Warrnambool SES attended houses where a small balcony had collapsed, roof tiles were blown off, and trampolines had been blown on to rooftops.
One crew cleared 20 trees off roads in the Naringal area, east of Warrnambool.
Meanwhile, the majority of power outages that initially affected 20,000 customers statewide early on Saturday have been resolved.
About 5,000 outages still apply to some CitiPower and Powercor customers mostly in the western half of the state.
Snowfall on the alpine peaks
Wind gusts in the alpine region reached well over 100 kilometres per hour, and thick snow has been falling across the highest areas.
ABC Goulburn Murray’s Sarah Krieg in Dinner Plain in the Alpine National Park said, “we’ve had 40cm of snow and counting”.
Winter Wonderland in Dinner Plain, Victoria on Saturday. (ABC News: Sarah Krieg)
ABC producer Sarah Krieg took this image from her window this morning. (ABC News: Sarah Krieg)
Thick snowfall in Dinner Plain, in Victoria’s alpine region on Saturday morning. (ABC News: Sarah Krieg)
Thick snow has covered Mt Donna Buang in the Yarra Ranges. (Supplied: Tony Lewis)
Victorian peaks received significant snowfall overnight, including Mt Donna Buang in the Yarra Ranges.
Tony Lewis, a volunteer for the Wesburn-Millgrove CFA, said about 10 centimetres of snow covered the road leading to the summit making it difficult for vehicles to pass through.
“This has been the most significant snowfall on the mountain, this winter,” he told the ABC.
Mr Lewis said drivers needed to “take care” if visiting the summit this weekend.
“Drive to the conditions, and follow the instruction from traffic management and Parks Victoria,” he said.
SES state duty officer Grant Machell told the ABC he wasn’t aware of any injuries overnight but on Friday an unlucky person was trapped under a tree, though thankfully managed to free themselves.
He said it was likely some Victorians would wake up on Saturday morning to an “extra trampoline in the backyard” or, in the bad cases, a tree on their car in the front yard.
SES crews assisted with a trampoline that was blown onto the roof of a Warrnambool house. (Supplied: SES Warrnambool)
Strong wind picked up the large trampoline. (Supplied: SES Warrnambool)
Driving around Melbourne and the rest of the state on Saturday, he said the SES was expecting to see a lot of trees on the road and urged people to drive to the conditions.
“Even if it feels like a still day, that doesn’t mean they won’t fall, because they’ve been under so much stress,” Mr Machell said.
Damage in Melbourne
Multiple firefighters have attended an apartment building at the corner of Doncaster and Tram Roads in Doncaster to secure a large piece of metal sheeting that came loose in high winds last night.
Because of the risk of the sheeting falling onto the road, firefighters on scene said they had asked police to close Doncaster Road while they remove it.
Meanwhile, in Eltham in the city’s north-east, trees have caused damage to a power line.
Local resident, Doug, told reporters the night had been “scary”.
“Up here you never take the wind for granted,” he said.
In Ringwood East in the city’s east, a tree fell on a house about 3:30am.
“I heard the noise of the tree falling, it was just right above our bedroom,” resident Tinkip Lilian said.
“My wife work up screaming and I ran outside, saw the tree, went back inside, checked on the kids — they were fine thankfully.”
Miriam Bradbury, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said there had been strong winds “right across the state” overnight but especially across the north-east.
“About our more elevated areas, we’ve seen wind gusts in excess of 100 kilometres an hour,” she said.
“Mt Hotham recorded a 128km/h wind gust, 124km/h at Mt Buller, but even some more lower lying areas have seen wind gusts as well,” Ms Bradbury said.
“Albury/Wodonga has seen a 96km/h wind gust, 80km/h at Wangaratta — so essentially, very, very windy conditions.”
Rainfall was also intense in the last 12 hours she said, with many areas receiving five to 15mm and some as much as 50mm.
Ms Bradbury said temperatures on Saturday would remain in the “low teens” in most areas and were likely to increase slightly to the “mid teens” by Sunday.