'Freak' weather event causes wind gusts of more than 140km/h

Two severe weather warnings combined to bring down trees and cause widespread power outages as more than half a million Victorians were left without power, in some cases for more than four days.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Christie Johnson said the strongest winds were recorded at elevated areas, by low-lying coastal areas also copped a belting.

"The strongest wind gusts we had were 165km/h at Hogan Island and we don't normally pay much attention to the wind gusts there but even for Hogan Island, it was very strong," she said.

"In terms of other noted ones, we had 146km/h at Wilsons Prom, 143km/h at Mount William in The Grampians and 135km/h at South Channel Island on Port Phillip Bay.

"We also had 122km/h at Frankston Beach and 110km/h or more through Mount Buller, Yarram, East Sale, Melbourne Airport, St Kilda and at Airleys Inlet."

The high wind gusts also coincided with an alert for thunderstorm asthma, resulting in a spike of close to 80 per cent of respiratory cases in south-west Victoria via Triple Zero last week.

"Spring is traditionally our windiest time of the year but we do get these wind events every few years," Ms Johnson said.

"However, it might be slightly unusual to have had two of them in the same year given we had one in June."

Strong gusts were also recorded around Hopetoun and Walpeup on Thursday as the first of two severe weather systems crossed the state.

"The low pressure system was the lowest pressure we've seen in Victoria during October for about 20 years," she said.

"It was a very low, low pressure system which means the lower the central pressure of the low pressure system, the stronger the wind is wrapping around it.

"We do get those low pressure systems more commonly in winter but it's relatively uncommon for them to form over Victoria, usually it's over Bass Strait."

Nicole Crawford, who runs a Merino stud with her parents John and Rhonda Crawford at Victoria Valley, described it as a "freak weather event".

"It hit us on Thursday and it went eerily quiet in the house and then it felt airplane was flying over with the sound of the deafening wind and weather cell letting go over us," she said.

"We had a deluge of rain and hail the size of golf balls.

"It damaged quite a few skylights we had in the woolshed and we had a mob of stud ewes which jumped over a fence because they were that scared."

On top of the wind, the Crawfords received about 33 millimetres of rain overnight Thursday, while the wild weather also left them without a landline.

"I haven't experienced something like that in my life and my father can't recall one either," she said.

Stud cattle breeder Shirley Trenery, Neerim South, said strong winds during the year had caused significant damage to her property's historic garden, Balgowan, and its surrounding landscape.

"Prior to the storm back in June we lost one of our stone pines which was 143 years ago," she said.

"When we came here, we had five to start with and now we're down to one and they date back to 1878.

"The weather on Thursday was also dreadful as we had a huge cypress tree come down, several limbs fell and anything that was rather tall was just whipped off at the top."

However, for Tarrington mixed-enterprise farmer Brent Herrmann it was a different story.

"We escaped pretty well but we had 42 mil at Tarrington with a bit of hail but we don't think that's caused much damage to the crops," he said.

"We see weather events as rough as that quite often but when the rain came down, it did fall very heavily.

"We didn't have too much damage at all and didn't have to cut any trees off fences."

Mr Herrmann runs sheep for wool and meat and also does cereal, oil seed and pulse cropping.