BATHURST endured a tough afternoon when a storm swept through the region on Tuesday, but got off lightly compared to other regional cities.
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The Bureau of Meteorology reported wind gusts of more than 80km/h at the storm's peak about 5.45pm and the temperature quickly dropped more than 10 degrees Celsius from 36.3 at 5pm to 25.1 at 5.50pm.
The wild weather led to power outages in parts of Bathurst, affecting around 1100 Essential Energy customers, and brought down a number of trees.
In one terrifying incident, a tree came down on a car near the entrance to Simplot on Durham Street.
David Rankine, Community Capability Officer, Western Zone, and media spokesperson for the SES, said there were seven call-outs for local SES crews on Tuesday and another call-out for a tree down on Wednesday morning.
The number of calls for assistance were significantly less than what was seen in other regional cities.
"Bathurst had about seven call-outs [Tuesday] afternoon, which is good compared to Orange, which had about 15, and Wellington and Dubbo had about 20 each," Mr Rankine said.
"The storm had sort of petered out a little bit by the time it got to Bathurst, but there were a number of jobs.
"Our teams were able to look after those."
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While Bathurst dealt with trees that had come down, the situation was far more serious elsewhere.
An incident in Dubbo saw roofing blow of a unit complex, with cars in the same street left with broken windows.
Power had also been restored in the Bathurst central business district by morning, while parts of Orange were still experiencing outages on Wednesday afternoon.
"Essential Energy crews worked throughout the night in challenging conditions to restore power to over 25,000 customers after over 31,000 homes and business lost power [Tuesday] afternoon, after widespread storms caused significant damage to the electricity network in South West Slopes, Orana and Tablelands of NSW," an Essential Energy spokesperson said on Wednesday morning.
Mr Rankine said storms like the one the region just experienced were likely to continue occurring over the coming weeks.
"The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting that storms like we experienced [Tuesday], under La Nina conditions, will be reasonably frequent over the next four to five weeks," he said.
Residents are encouraged to take preventative action to protect their properties, which includes trimming branches and having qualified arborists remove dead trees where possible.
