The widespread thunderstorm that hit the NSW east coast in the early hours of Wednesday morning left tens of thousands of homes without power and kept emergency crews busy.
Deputy zone commander for Hunter NSW SES Peter Green said the service had responded to 86 requests for assistance within the wider Hunter over 24 hours.
"Approximately 45 of those were within the Central Coast between Gosford and Wyong," he said;
"About a dozen were within the Newcastle area, from Port Stephens to Newcastle and Lake Macquarie."
The remainder of the calls were from the Upper and Lower Hunter regions.
"The majority of requests for assistance were related to damage from the storm, like branches fallen on roofs, not so much from rising water," Mr Green said.
He said the storm produced a "relatively small amount of rain", considering the intensity of lightning and thunder.
The SES had responded to most of the region's calls for help by 10am but are planning to keep a close eye on weather forecasts for the remainder of the week.
Mr Green said the service was anticipating the development of further storm activity as far out as Thursday and possibly into Friday, based on information from the Bureau of Meteorology.
"Storms may appear without much warning and it's almost impossible to know exactly when they will strike," he said.
Mr Green people could prepare their properties before storms arrived by securing loose items in their yards, clearing gutters of fallen debris between storms and checking for weather updates and warnings.
Ausgrid said that 80,000 customers had lost power in Wednesday's storm.
"We have safely restored power to more than 50,000 customers overnight," they tweeted on Wednesday morning.
"We are working to restore less than 30,000 and the majority of those customers can expect to have power on today."
