Severe thunderstorms ripped through Victoria last night causing flash flooding in south-west Melbourne. Temperatures will soar today with new out of control bushfires popping up across the state.
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00:00Melbourne is set for another scorching day in this heatwave, which continues with the
00:09mercury expected to climb to 39 degrees today after a very uncomfortable night last night.
00:16The temperature's not really dipping below 21 degrees and in fact the heatwave conditions
00:21are being seen around really the rest of the country except for Queensland.
00:25For example, over in Adelaide it's expected to get up to 41 degrees today.
00:30But here in Melbourne and in Victoria, we also saw some really damaging storms sweep
00:36through parts of the state last night.
00:40This was particularly severe in the areas of Melbourne's west, in Werribee, as well
00:45as the city of Geelong, and also across in Queenscliff and the Mornington Peninsula where
00:52we saw in parts rainfall of between 50 to 60 millimetres, as well as very strong gusting
00:58winds and quite the lightning show as well.
01:01At the moment, there are still thousands of homes which are out of power at the height
01:06of these storms.
01:07Around 45,000 customers were left without any power and they are obviously working very
01:13hard to try to restore power to those affected areas now.
01:17But we also saw the SES called out for around 800 calls for assistance, 400 of those were
01:25for trees down and more than 180 for damage to buildings.
01:30And firefighters say that they believe that lightning strikes also actually led to a house
01:36fire in Taylors Lakes, which is in Melbourne's north-western suburbs.
01:41That started just before 1 o'clock this morning and by the time fire crews arrived, it was
01:47apparent that it had already become quite deep-seated and below the roofline, which
01:52is why they thought that it was probably a lightning strike.
01:55Now it took about 30 firefighters around an hour to bring that blaze under control and
02:01they say that they are going to continue to have to really extinguish some of those deep-seated
02:06hotspots that have severely damaged that home.
02:09But there is no relief immediately in sight at the moment.
02:12The Weather Bureau is saying that we are expecting to see further storms and lightning strikes,
02:18which are really a concern for fire crews.
02:22And they are expected to be across the western areas of the state, extending to central districts.
02:29We are also expected to continue to see these very hot temperatures and there won't be any
02:34relief until a cool change arrives tomorrow night.