Airports have been brought to a halt, trees have been downed and more than 200,000 lightning strikes were detected in 24 hours as wild weather rocked south-eastern Australia – and there’s more to come.

As thousands of residents remained without power and more spent Friday mopping up, emergency services in NSW and Victoria warned two more regions were likely to cop a pounding.

There was concern for the NSW Hunter Valley and Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula late on Friday, as the Bureau of Meteorology issued renewed warnings of dangerous winds.

“It will be quite a dangerous day to be anywhere near the coastal environment, and with those elevated winds just asking people to practice a little bit of elevated caution as we move through the next 12 to 24 hours,” BOM senior forecaster Jackson Browne said.

The Bureau of Meteorology is expecting windy and unsettled weather to continue into Friday night.

Severe winds are expected in the Snowy Mountains, Southern Highlands, Goulburn and the ACT. Thunderstorms are also possible in north-eastern NSW, followed by a major cold snap.

“The cold air will linger over south-east Australia during the weekend, with showers, small hail and low-level snow persisting over Tasmania and southern Victoria,” the weather bureau said.

“NSW and northern Victoria are set to have dry, sunny weather over the weekend, with frosty mornings inland.

“In the north, thunderstorms will mostly contract offshore, although some may linger through south-east Queensland on Saturday.”

Overnight on Thursday, Victorian State Emergency Service crews responded to nearly 350 calls for help, including more than 100 reports of building damage.

More than one-third of the callouts were for the Warrnambool region, on the state’s south-west coast. The town had wind gusts of more than 100km/h early on Friday, accompanied by widespread showers.

Hotham in Victoria had wind gusts of 137km/h while over the border in South Australia, Limestone posted 111km/h winds.

By midday on Friday, about 16,000 Victorian customers remained without power.

David Baker from VICSES told ABC TV there were also concerns about the possibility of coastal erosion as swells of up to eight metres struck the Victorian coast.

“Stay home if you can; stay inside, have a Netflix binge,” he said.

“Today is not the day to be out on the water.”

Tweet from @vicsesnews

Trees fall into homes, onto roads

Wind gusts of about 80km/h hit Sydney late on Thursday and early on Friday, leaving NSW SES crews scrambling to respond to calls for help.

Some parts of Sydney and inland NSW were also hit with brief, heavy downpours, although many areas were spared from significant rain.

After midnight on Friday, the NSW SES responded to more than 200 calls across the state, about a quarter of them in Sydney.

The city’s northern beaches were among the hardest hit areas, SES metro commander Allison Flaxman said.

“Most of the incidents were for fallen trees, including some very large ones which blocked traffic and impacted powerlines,” she said.

Three trees fell on one home in Frenchs Forest and firefighters were called in to help as more trees threatened to collapse on the property.

The homeowner told the ABC her family came outside the house about 1am due to the noise, just in time to see the trees topple on their garage.

Tweet from @NSWSES

Wild weather causes chaos at airports

On Friday morning, several domestic flights at Sydney Airport were delayed or cancelled due to the weather.

“Due to strong winds and scattered storm cells, airlines have cancelled a number of domestic flights and there will be some delays throughout the day,” a Sydney Airport spokesperson told the Seven Network.

Melbourne Airport was also reduced to just one runway on Friday morning.

Some flights were forced to circle around in the sky due to the disruptions, Sky News reported.

Weather warnings remain

Severe weather warnings remain active for much of Victoria’s south, including Melbourne, as well as parts of NSW and South Australia.

The BOM said wind gusts of up to 110km/h could hit Victoria’s south-west coast before the storms travelled east, reaching the west Gippsland coast later on Friday.

The SES warned people to avoid travel if possible and to be wary of any hazards like floodwater or debris such as fallen trees.

Melbourne, meanwhile, endured a cold and windy day. In Sydney, winds eased before a mostly sunny afternoon.

Hundreds of thousands of lighting strikes

According to Weatherzone, there were 245,000 lightning strikes within a 800 kilometres radius of Dubbo between Thursday and Friday morning.

Majority of the lightning strikes were in NSW, but some were recorded in Queensland, Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

“This week’s thunderstorms are a taste of the stormy weather that will becomes more prominent over eastern and northern Australia sin the coming months,” Weatherzone said.

– with AAP