The State Emergency Service (SES) received a staggering 40 calls from concerned members of the community over an intense two hour period from 3pm Tuesday. A SES spokeswoman said high winds and concentrated bursts of hail prompted the flurry of calls for assistance.

“The hail has caused most of the problems,” Ashley Bell from the SES said. “We’ve got a lot of people telling us they’ve got roof damage and skylights smashed.”

The widespread damage to roofs required urgent attention from strike teams of volunteers, who were deployed to sandbagging and sealing duty during the afternoon and evening. Special praise was reserved for these volunteers by Margaret Kelly, just one of the many residents who benefited from the prompt assistance of the SES.

“I can tell you, right now, that without these guys today my whole livelihood would be under threat right now,” Mrs Kelly said.

Additional strike teams of volunteers were being deployed to provide assistance to residents in Port Macquarie yesterday evening. More volunteers were arriving from Wingham to assist.

“It’s important for us to focus on patch jobs on roofs,” Ms Bell said. “We have to make sure that those people are safe and any further damage is prevented.”

The impressive response of the SES may only be a brief cause for celebration, Ms Bell said, as there is another concerning storm front developing later on Wednesday. 

“(The storm) was pretty intense,” she said, “and even though we didn’t have any trees come down, people need to still be aware out there.

“We have another front coming through today, though, so we’ll wait and see what happens.”

THREE-centimetre hailstones had Port Macquarie residents ducking for cover as a couple of big storms hit on Tuesday afternoon.

Port was drenched by 6mm of rain in 10 minutes at 2pm, and the hailstones had people rushing to get their cars under cover in time.

The temperature plummeted from 26 degrees Celsius at 12.30pm to 18 by 1.15pm before the rain and hail came bucketing down.

Wind gusts of 72km/h were recorded at 1.15pm.

The dark clouds returned a couple of hours later but weatherzone.com.au meteorologist Rob Sharpe said the first storm was the one which brought more damage.

“The first one was pretty significant,” he said.

There was also plenty of lightning around. Mr Sharpe said about 20,000 lightning strikes were recorded across NSW.

“There was quite a bit of lightning,” Mr Sharpe said.

There’s a chance of further showers this afternoon while Thursday, Friday and Saturday should be mostly sunny. The afternoon and evening showers could return on Sunday.

“There’s a small chance of a storm,” Mr Sharpe said.

Port wasn’t the only NSW centre to cop the wild weather yesterday. Newcastle received 14mm in just 10 minutes.