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More wild weather for Vic, as hundreds remain without power

Victoria is bracing for more wild weather as households still wait for power to return.

Victoria is bracing for more wild weather as households still wait for power to return. Photo: AAP/Erik Anderson

Victorians are being told to batten down the hatches, with more wild weather on the way.

Two weather fronts in the past week have caused extensive damage across the state, with three people killed by falling trees and power cut to thousands of homes and businesses.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for damaging winds across parts of Victoria, including Melbourne.

Up to 110km/h winds are expected to develop across elevated areas early on Wednesday before reaching Melbourne later in the day.

Senior forecaster Michael Efron expected peak wind gusts of 90-100km/h in the city.

“Not quite as strong as what we saw last Thursday, but still strong enough to cause some damage across the landscape,” he said.

“It isn’t that hard to actually dislodge trees from the soil given the reasonably wet conditions that we saw through August.”

Mr Efron said the winds weren’t forecast to ease until late on Wednesday afternoon.

But another front is tipped to follow on Thursday, bringing more damaging winds, particularly for Victoria’s north-east and south-west.

That front could also involve potential thunderstorm activity, which might hit Melbourne and drop temperatures.

“We have seen some pretty mild weather in the short term but it will cool down towards the end of the week,” Mr Efron said.

The latest weather warning comes as energy supplier AusNet continues to work on restoring services to more than 1000 customers.

AusNet, the power provider to the state’s east, had reported about 4600 outages on Monday morning after more damaging winds late on Sunday.

That figure was still above 1300 on Tuesday afternoon.

Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien wants the state government to step in to get households back online faster.

Thursday’s power cuts also meant untreated water at a dam east of Melbourne was released into the system.

It sparked a warning on Friday that about 250,000 households across almost 100 Melbourne suburbs should boil their drinking water.

There was panic buying of water, but Yarra Valley Water lifted the advisory on Sunday.

-AAP

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