Australia Weather News

More than 3,000 people are without power on Wednesday morning after storms across Victoria on Tuesday.

Some parts of Victoria recorded 50 millimetres of rain on Tuesday afternoon and evening, including Mildura, Wodonga, Wangaratta and Robinvale.

Conditions have eased on Wednesday with some isolated thunderstorms still expected.

An emergency warning was briefly issued just after 7:30pm for people in areas north-west of Melbourne to immediately take shelter, including Seymour, Castlemaine, Kyneton and Kilmore.

It followed an emergency warning being issued at 2pmfor severe thunderstorms affecting a large area stretching from Sunbury, north-west of Melbourne, through St Albans to Coburg, Preston and down to Melbourne's CBD.

A second separate emergency warning was issued for an area from Healesville to Yarra Junction and out past Warburton, east of Melbourne.

By 3pm, the emergency warning had shifted away from Sunbury across Melbourne's north to include eastern suburbs such as Doncaster and Greensborough and further south-east including Danendong, Berwick and near Pakenham.

Thunderstorms were detected near the area east of Pakenham and Bunyip just before 4pm, and were moving further south-east.

The storms dumped almost 40 millimetres of rain at Spring Hill, north-west of Melbourne, in just over an hour.

There had been about 290 calls to the SES for help for flooding and building damage by 8pm, including around the Heidelberg, Craigieburn, Fawkner, Gisborne and Knox areas.

Earlier on Tuesday evening, the town of Kyabram on the Victoria-New South Wales border recorded 42mm of rain, with half of that falling in just half an hour.

The State Control Centre's Josh Gamble revealed that in some cases,some towns had torrential downpours, while rain in nearby areas hardly reached a notch on the gauge.

"If you look at Redesdale, it got 0.4 mills of rain over today and then you look at Trentham some [50 kilometres] to the south and they've received roughly 30 mills," he said.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Peter Stapleton said the heavy rain was being caused by a large tropical low over central Australia coinciding with an upper level trough.

"We've seen generally falls in the mid-to-high teens across large parts of the state and some of those higher totals particularly through the central ranges and eastern ranges," he said.

"A lot of these totals have been occurring in fairly short periods."

Mr Stapleton said some areas were hit by repeated storms today but most of south-west Victoria missed out on any rain.

About 9,000 properties were without power at 7pm, with that number falling to 3,000 by Wednesday morning.

Citipower and Powerco spokesperson Emma Tyner said 890 customers lost power in the Sunshine North area in Melbourne's west after lightning hit a pole, while in the northern suburbs, 765 customers in Northcote and more than 1,000 in Thornbury had been disconnected.

Ms Tyner said crews were working as quickly as possible to restore power.

"We certainly ramped up resources leading up to today. We've been monitoring this weather for some time, so we're ready to respond," she said.

Callers told the ABC that outbound lanes at the railway underpass on Dandenong Road at Caulfield Road were flooded just after 3pm, along with sections of Canterbury Road city-bound at Bayswater North.

Another caller from Ballan said he had recorded more rain in 30 minutes than he had since the start of the year.

Authorities warned rain in bushfire-affected areas could create the potential for landslides and wash debris, such as ash, soil, trees and rocks, into local waterways.