{"id":500862,"date":"2026-02-24T11:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500862\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:26:14","slug":"thousands-without-power-as-intense-storms-sweep-across-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500862\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands without power as intense storms sweep across Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dangerous storms are continuing to move across Victoria after dumping heavy rain across large parts of Melbourne today.<\/p>\n

An emergency warning was briefly issued just after 7:30pm for people in areas north-west of Melbourne to immediately take shelter, including Seymour, Castlemaine, Kyneton and Kilmore.<\/p>\n

State Duty Officer Shane McBride has told ABC Radio Melbourne<\/a> heavy rain was still expected but the risk of flash flooding and large hail had reduced by 8:30pm.<\/p>\n

“They are fast moving so widespread rainfall expected of between 30 and 60 millimetres going through on those cells,” he said.<\/p>\n

It followed an emergency warning being issued at 2pm for severe thunderstorms affecting a large area stretching from Sunbury, north-west of Melbourne, through St Albans to Coburg, Preston and down to Melbourne’s CBD.<\/p>\n

A second separate emergency warning was issued for an area from Healesville to Yarra Junction and out past Warburton, east of Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Water pools outside the North Melbourne police station. (Supplied: Helen Kyriacou)<\/p>\n

By 3pm, the emergency warning had shifted away from Sunbury across Melbourne’s north to include eastern suburbs such as Doncaster and Greensborough and further south-east including Danendong, Berwick and near Pakenham.<\/p>\n

Thunderstorms were detected near the area east of Pakenham and Bunyip just before 4pm, and were moving further south-east.<\/p>\n

The storms dumped almost 40 millimetres of rain at Spring Hill, north-west of Melbourne, in just over an hour.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Storms continued to sweep across Victoria at 6pm. (Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)<\/p>\n

There had been about 290 calls to the SES for help for flooding and building damage by 8pm, including around the Heidelberg, Craigieburn, Fawkner, Gisborne and Knox areas.<\/p>\n

Mr McBride said Bendigo was also starting to see damage as the heavy rain continued across large parts of Victoria.<\/p>\n

“There is another system expected to come through from the north, north-west part of the state, probably early morning at this stage.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

More than 12mm of rain fell in a short period in inner Melbourne, including Southbank. (ABC News: Melissa Brown)<\/p>\n

Earlier on Tuesday evening, the town of Kyabram on the Victoria-New South Wales border recorded 42mm of rain, with half of that falling in just half an hour.<\/p>\n

The State Control Centre’s Josh Gamble revealed that in some cases, some towns had torrential downpours, while rain in nearby areas hardly reached a notch on the gauge.<\/p>\n

Summer storms deliver intense rainfall<\/a><\/p>\n

There are widespread warnings for intense rain and potential flooding, as summer storms hit southern states.<\/p>\n

“If you look at Redesdale, it got 0.4 mills of rain over today and then you look at Trentham some [50 kilometres] to the south and they’ve received roughly 30 mills,” he said.<\/p>\n

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Peter Stapleton said the heavy rain was being caused by a large tropical low over central Australia coinciding with an upper level trough.<\/p>\n

“We’ve seen generally falls in the mid-to-high teens across large parts of the state and some of those higher totals particularly through the central ranges and eastern ranges,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A lot of these totals have been occurring in fairly short periods.”<\/p>\n

Mr Stapleton said some areas were hit by repeated storms today but most of south-west Victoria missed out on any rain.<\/p>\n

\"White<\/p>\n

Thunder could be heard as rain started to fall at Clifton Springs, east of Geelong, at 2pm. (Supplied: Renae Stoneham)<\/p>\n

About 9,000 properties were without power at 7pm.<\/p>\n

Citipower and Powerco spokesperson Emma Tyner said 890 customers lost power in the Sunshine North area in Melbourne’s west after lightning hit a pole, while in the northern suburbs, 765 customers in Northcote and more than 1,000 in Thornbury had been disconnected.<\/p>\n

Ms Tyner said crews were working as quickly as possible to restore power.<\/p>\n

“We certainly ramped up resources leading up to today. We’ve been monitoring this weather for some time, so we’re ready to respond,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"Dark<\/p>\n

Storm clouds at Yarra Junction this afternoon. (Supplied: Caz Anne)<\/p>\n

Callers told the ABC that outbound lanes at the railway underpass on Dandenong Road at Caulfield Road were flooded just after 3pm, along with sections of Canterbury Road city-bound at Bayswater North.<\/p>\n

Another caller from Ballan said he had recorded more rain in 30 minutes than he had since the start of the year.<\/p>\n

Authorities warned rain in bushfire-affected areas could create the potential for landslides and wash debris, such as ash, soil, trees and rocks, into local waterways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dangerous storms are continuing to move across Victoria after dumping heavy rain across large parts of Melbourne today.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,36506,200323,44,15157,17711,1192],"class_list":["post-500862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-emergency","tag-flash-flooding","tag-news","tag-rain","tag-storm","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}