Emergency warnings have been issued for Victorian and NSW towns as the bushfire crisis engulfing parts of south-eastern Australia worsens.

Victorian authorities said the Loch Sport fire, which was only a kilometre from the coastal Gippsland town on Tuesday afternoon, was expected to reach it as a cold change brought changing wind gusts.

“That fire has now changed direction and is moving in an easterly direction and is expected to continue to move east this afternoon towards the township of Loch Sport,” CFA incident controller Andy Gillham said.

“We’ve asked people in Loch Sport this morning to stay where they are and shelter … or move to a safe area.”

There is only one road in and out of Loch Sport, and it has been affected by fire.

“We expect the impacts to be on the immediate western end of town, and we’ve got lots of appliances from CFA and FRV and other agencies there to minimise any impact,” Gillham said.

“There’s a very narrow strip of vegetation that lies between the main road and the lake itself, and there is potential for the fire to move right along that strip and it’ll come very close to those backyards of those homes that lie on that strip.”

Meanwhile, the NSW Rural Fire Service issued an emergency warning for fire at Coolagolite, in the Bega Valley, on Tuesday afternoon.

“The fire continues to burn in an easterly direction towards Cuttagee, Barragga Bay and Bermagui. Residents in those areas should seek shelter as the fire approaches. It is too late to leave,” it said.

It followed another emergency warning for the Abernethy area, west of Newcastle, due to a bushfire on Allandale Street in Kearsley. Residents were told it was too late to leave.

“Seek shelter now inside a solid structure such as a house,” the NSW RFS said.

There were 82 fires burning across NSW on Tuesday afternoon, including 16 that were uncontained. Ahead of the stormy cool change, temperatures soared towards 40 degrees in parts of the state, including including Sydney.

In Tasmania, welcome rain was helping firefighters on Flinders Island, where an out-of-control bushfire was downgraded to advice level on Tuesday.

In South Australia, tens of thousands of homes were without power after a wild lightning storm felled trees and power lines on Monday night.

There were about 44,000 lightning strikes across SA in the three hours to 11pm. Severe winds, including gusts up to 106km/h at Noarlunga, also caused havoc for emergency services.

Victoria

More than 650 firefighters are on the ground fighting the fast-moving blaze at Briagolong in Gippsland. It has tripled in size to cover about 17,000 hectares as wind gusts up to 80km/h make containment efforts more difficult.

“We’re experiencing spot fires well ahead of the main fire front,” Country Fire Authority chief Jason Heffernan told ABC TV.

“Firefighters are doing their best to try and contain that fire but it is very challenging.”

Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll said the fires had forced seven schools to close in the Gippsland area.

Premier Jacinta Allan said a relief centre had been set up at Sale, about 30 kilometres south of the bushfire. Teams were yet to assess fire-ravaged areas to determinate what assets had been lost, Allan said.

“The fire season has come and it’s come early,” she said.

“We’ve also got a couple of days of really wild weather so our emergency services are responding in some really difficult circumstances in all ends of the state.”

Tweet from @GippsNews

Heffernan said a strong rain front should pass through Gippsland on Tuesday night bringing a reprieve for firefighters.

“There’s a bit of a running joke down here in Victoria that you can expect four seasons in one day,” he said.

“I’m going to tell you, today they’re not wrong.”

The Bureau of Meteorology has also issued warnings for damaging winds and heavy rain across Victoria.

“The cold front moving across today will bring moderate to heavy rainfall and isolated thunderstorms and damaging winds to central and eastern parts of the state,” it said.

“The most significant rainfall totals are expected for Gippsland, where totals may exceed 150 millimetres in some places. Other parts of Victoria could see rainfall totals over 50 millimetres.”

NSW

NSW Premier Chris Minns urged residents to stay safe, amid total fire bans across large swathes of NSW.

There were extreme fire danger ratings for Sydney and the Hunter on Tuesday, as well as much of the state’s interior, stretching from the lower central-west plains to the Queensland border.

Temperatures were expected to range from 30 degrees in parts of coastal Sydney to 37 degrees in Penrith, while the mercury was forecast to hit the low-mid-30s in the Hunter and Illawarra regions and on the south coast.

Hot weather is also expected for much of the inland as northerly winds funnel heat into the state from Queensland.

Minns said hazard reduction activity had been delayed because of wet weather.

“That puts pressure on, particularly, coastal communities and regional communities and we’re cognisant of that,” he said.

“I don’t want anybody to get, I guess, overconfident. This could be a really tough fire season.”

The largest of the out-of-control blazes was a 820-hectare bushfire burning in forests at Marengo, west of Coffs Harbour on the north coast.

Tweet from @ChrisMinnsMP

Elsewhere, firefighters were initially forced to stand down after a blaze swept across an RAAF air weapons range south of Evans Head. The range is sometimes used for bombing exercises, and contains unexploded World War II bombs.

NSW RFS spokesman Ben Shepherd said concerning fires continued to burn in areas such as the Snowy-Monaro region, where a 420-hectare bushfire was out of control near Bredbo.

Peak wind gusts of up to 100km/h were forecast, which would “push those fires along very, very quickly”, he told ABC radio.

“We could see some rain in parts of NSW maybe later on in the week, but while it remains this hot and this windy, we’ve got that elevated fire risk for most of NSW,” he said.

-with AAP