{"id":566339,"date":"2026-03-26T20:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/566339\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:49:09","slug":"severe-storm-causes-thousands-of-power-outages-and-hundreds-calls-for-help-in-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/566339\/","title":{"rendered":"Severe storm causes thousands of power outages and hundreds calls for help in Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of homes and businesses remain without power across the Sydney area after a severe thunderstorm hit the area.<\/p>\n

The front moved through Sydney from 5.30pm on Thursday, bringing with it strong winds, rain, hail and thousands of lightning strikes.<\/p>\n

There were more than 250 calls to Fire and Rescue NSW for help within the first two hours, with the number of calls at more than 400 as of 9.30pm.<\/p>\n

The majority of incidents occurred in the greater Sydney region, with the NSW SES Warringah, Pittwater unit responding to more than 50 call-outs.<\/p>\n

Campbelltown received small hail and recorded the most rainfall with 39 millimetres.<\/p>\n

Visibility and temperatures plummeted as some areas experienced wind gusts of up to 80 kilometres per hour, before the storm tracked off the coast.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lightning seen at Moore Park, Sydney. (Supplied: Reah Browning)<\/p>\n

At 8.45pm on Thursday, Endeavour Energy’s website showed more than 4,400 homes and businesses without power, and Ausgrid more than 7,350.<\/p>\n

Outages continue to be resolved, and Endeavor Energy reported about 600 properties were without power as of 5:30am Friday, while 5,000 Ausgrid customers remain affected.<\/p>\n

Tree traps occupant in house<\/p>\n

Fire and Rescue NSW acting superintendent John Moore said the storms swept right across the metropolitan area from the southern suburbs to the Northern Beaches.<\/p>\n

“In the south-west suburbs we had some flooding, some hail. We’ve had trees down \u2014 no real roofs off or anything like that, but we’ve had minor damage with tree limbs on roofs,” he said.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Moore said a “notable incident” was a tree which had fallen across a house in Hornsby, trapping an occupant, but without injury.<\/p>\n

Crane collapses in Dubbo<\/a><\/p>\n

Emergency evacuations are underway after a crane collapses in a powerful storm in western NSW.<\/p>\n

“Fire and Rescue attended to the tree. They had to call in SES for assistance and an electrical authority as well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There was live powerlines down across the road and the tree. The removal of the tree was quite difficult.<\/p>\n

“The occupant left house safely.”<\/p>\n

He said a shopping centre in Campbelltown had some flooding in the concourse and a couple of residents reported roof leaks.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The storm approaching Camden. (Supplied: Matthew Frost)<\/p>\n

Warnings continue<\/p>\n

Transport services are running as normal on Friday morning following storm-related delays on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

The storm outbreak was caused by cold polar air surging north from Antarctica combining with warm humid March air<\/a> that generally resides over New South Wales.<\/p>\n

NSW SES intelligence and warnings officer David Peterson said on Friday it was expected the coastal low would rapidly intensify through parts of the state.<\/p>\n

“This is going to bring damaging southerly wind gusts to the majority of the south coast of the state and elevated areas further inland,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This will also be accompanied by widespread rainfall between 10 and 40mm, but heavier isolated falls of up to 100mm is possible along the coastal fringe.”<\/p>\n

It could also be the coldest March day in decades for the state’s south east.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of homes and businesses remain without power across the Sydney area after a severe thunderstorm hit the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[278563,64,63,68514,88635,18630,52473,44096,44,38664,15157,33608,34792,670,74668,16861,278564,1192,278562],"class_list":["post-566339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-278563","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-campbelltown","tag-fire-and-rescue-nsw","tag-flooding","tag-hail","tag-lightning","tag-news","tag-power-outages","tag-rain","tag-ses","tag-storms","tag-sydney","tag-thunderstorm","tag-transport","tag-tree-on-house","tag-weather","tag-without-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566339","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=566339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}