Severe weather warnings for damaging winds are in place across multiple states this morning. Large parts of Victoria are recovering after trees were downed and power cut, and more damaging gusts are expected today.
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00:00At State Control Centre, SES officers have been busy taking calls from residents who've
00:09woken this morning to the scenes of destruction from those really damaging winds.
00:14They've had well over 500 calls for help.
00:17At least 400 of those have been for trees down and more than 70 for buildings that have
00:24been damaged.
00:25Earlier on we heard from Bev, one resident who lives in Chelsea Heights, which is in
00:30Melbourne's southeastern suburbs, and she says that she's very lucky but she still is
00:36shaking after a tree that crashed down narrowly missed her home.
00:41I heard this almighty crash outside and was very concerned and I looked out my window
00:48and saw tree branches against the edge of my window.
00:52So I came downstairs to investigate what was happening and saw a branch of my tree
00:57had come off.
00:59Very fortunately it just missed my window except for the few branches that touched it.
01:05And there are severe weather warnings for damaging winds and associated thunderstorms
01:10or squally rain that covers more than half of the state of Victoria.
01:15We've heard from the SES's Director of Operations, Tim Webush, and he says that along with those
01:22damaging wind warnings, there are also gale warnings for the coasts as well as warnings
01:29for damaging surf and abnormally high tides.
01:32So he says that today is not the day to go out and do any rock fishing.
01:37He says that in terms of trees down, the majority of the damage that we have seen overnight
01:42has been in Melbourne's east and also southeast, so suburbs like Emerald as well as Warragul
01:49and Pakenham.
01:50Had a house damaged in Glen Waverley in the back of the house that's collapsed as a result
01:55of a large tree coming down.
01:56Fortunately no injuries there, but we are expecting as the winds cross the state throughout
02:01the day and they'll re-intensify across Melbourne this afternoon, that we will see further damage
02:05as the winds move through the state.
02:08We have seen some peak gusts of 128 kilometres per hour at Mount Buller and over in the states
02:15west in Portland there were gusts of up to 106 kilometres per hour and in Kilmore we've
02:22seen around 93 kilometres per hour, but it's the sustained winds that are also causing
02:28the damage.
02:29For example, in Kilmore Gap, which is just north of Melbourne, we've seen sustained winds
02:33of around 70 kilometres per hour and also some gusts across Melbourne metropolitan area
02:40between 60 to 70 kilometres per hour as well.
02:44Now apart from the warnings here in Victoria, there are also some warnings for South Australia
02:49as well.
02:50In the south east part of the state however, these conditions are easing as that weather
02:57system starts to contract to the east.
02:59We're also seeing some of those severe weather warnings for damaging winds across Tasmania's
03:05western and northern areas and we're hearing from the Weather Bureau that some of these
03:09winds are expected to start to ease throughout the morning, however they'll then start to
03:16pick up again in the afternoon so we will see those gusts once again happening before
03:21finally easing again later tonight.