Woolgrower and CFA firefighter Rod McErvale warns of fire risk ahead of dry lightning

The Bureau of Meteorology says broad parts of Victoria could get dry lightning "without much rainfall" before a cool change sweeps across the state on Friday.

Mr McErvale is a woolgrower at Lexton and Beaufort and serves as CFA's Beaufort Group officer.

He said firefighting conditions at the recent fires in The Grampians were some of the worst he had witnessed.

"Last Tuesday was in the top-10 worst days of fighting a fire in our area since I joined the brigade when I was 16," Mr McErvale, a Raglan Fire Brigade member, said.

"Normally a wind change would last for half an hour, but in this case it lasted 10 hours."

Mr McErvale warned farmers to take extra precautions to reduce the risk of preventable fires on Thursday.

"Most farmers are pretty switched on and they try and minimise something from starting and that has been a big change in 20 years," he said.

"However, if a fire starts in inaccessible ground, by the time crews arrive, it may have already grown to a considerable size and that's our concern with lightning given we have a lot of crown land to the north of our group's boundary.

"Anything you do on the farm has a risk, and people need to do what they can to minimise that risk on days of heightened fire danger."

Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Helen Reid said thunderstorms would develop on Thursday.

"We're not expecting much rainfall with them so there is a sense we could expect some dry lightning," she said.

"That includes the northern country, north-central, central, north-east and all of Gippsland."

The heat on Thursday will be a result of a strong north-westerly flow, with winds in the western half of the state predicted to reach 25-40 kilometres an hour with gusts up to 60km/h.

Ms Reid said farmers could expect "measurable" rainfall in the eastern half of the state on Friday as a result of a cold front and trough with falls predicted in the vicinity of 5-10 millimetres.