Damaging conditions are due to ease after days of wild weather but the risk remains of major thunderstorms.
Residents in Queensland’s Wide Bay and surrounding land areas have been put on alert for a risk of severe thunderstorms with damaging winds and large hail on Saturday.
Bureau of Meteorology senior meteorologist Angus Hines said storms and showers are set to linger around the rest of Australia’s east coast over the weekend.
“The storm risk has cleared for the worst affected areas,” he said.
“In regards to storm activity expected on Saturday, there is still a risk over some parts of eastern and interior Queensland overall [but] it is not forecast to be as active or as widespread as the storms on Friday.”
There is still a hazardous surf warning in place for parts of the New South Wales coastline and a risk of severe thunderstorms for parts of Queensland.
“If severe storms do develop in these areas, the likely threats on Saturday are damaging wind gusts and large hail,” he said.
Western NSW, central Victoria and South Australia have been battered by damaging wind, heavy rain and large hailstones over the past few days.
The storms prompted severe weather warnings, caused power outages and hundreds of calls to state emergency services.
Late on Friday, BoM warned severe thunderstorms with damaging wind gusts would continue into the evening in parts of eastern NSW.
Residents were told to move cars under cover, secure loose items around their homes and stay clear of creeks and storm drains.
Hines said there had been over 500,000 lightning strikes reported across the country, with the vast majority over NSW and Victoria.
“Thunderstorms did bring brief but heavy rainfall to many places on Friday,” he said. “In Victoria, heavy rainfall affected Geelong, which saw 69 millimetres of rainfall through the day, but that included 50 millimetres in 45 minutes as a severe thunderstorm moved directly overhead.”
Extensive damage to transmission towers between western NSW’s Buronga and Broken Hill left more than 1,600 powerless at one point, with some temporarily connected via backup generators.
Crowds heading to the MotoGP at Phillip Island, south-east of Melbourne, were told to reconsider travel due to wild conditions.
Showers would develop from Eastern Queensland to the Kimberley on Saturday afternoon before conditions settled, bureau senior meteorologist Sarah Scully said.
Calmer, sunny conditions were due to set in by Sunday afternoon.
