WEDNESDAY 8am: SES crews from the Bendigo region completed all call out jobs at about 10pm.

Bendigo SES responded to 30 jobs on Tuesday, a couple involved very large trees and had crews committed for several hours.

An SES spokeswoman said the biggest job in the Bendigo region was in Kangaroo Flat but most other jobs were out of town.

She said there was a large tree down at Axedale Primary School but the rest was more widespread.

EARLIER:

STATE Emergency Service crews were kept busy attending as many as 35 callouts as wild weather lashed central Victoria yesterday.

Bendigo experienced wind gusts of up to 82km/h, with average speeds peaking at 56km/h at 1.26pm, accompanied by a near record-breaking October temperature of 34.7 degrees.

SES spokeswoman Natalie Stanway said Bendigo crews attended fallen trees and damaged roofs from about midday and would likely continue to work through last night.

“We’ve got it from Kangaroo Flat through to Axedale, through to Goornong and Flora Hill, it’s throughout Bendigo,” she said.

“It’s predominantly trees down and that’s down on roads and homes and sheds.

“So I guess the message we would like to get out to people is certainly to consider not leaving cars under trees but put them under shelter wherever possible.”

The conditions resulted in an extreme fire danger rating for the region and firefighters responded to more than 200 fires across the state.

Among those was a grassfire on Edwards Road, Marong, which was declared safe by 4pm.

Another 2500 hectare blaze took hold in Lancefield, destroying at least one house and threatening more than 190 properties.

Emergency services commissioner Craig Lapsley said the Lancefield fire was started after a controlled burn jumped containment lines last week.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Chris Godfred said the heatwave was well above the October average of 20.5 degrees.

“There was a maximum of 35.5 which occurred on October 21, 2007 so certainly it was very close to a record for this time of year,” he said.

The extreme weather conditions also led to power failures across the city with thousands of premises experiencing outages.

The worst affected area was Golden Square where 2437 customers were switched off.

While power had been restored to most Bendigo suburbs by about 3pm, 668 customers in Maldon were expected to remain without power until 8.30pm.

Up to six sets of traffic lights near the Bendigo CBD were also out throughout the day, including simultaneously at three intersections on Barnard Street at View, Don and Wattle streets.

The traffic lights at the fountain in Pall Mall were also out.

Mr Godfred said Wednesday would bring some relief with an overnight low of 9 degrees rising to a maximum of 20.

“Winds will be basically southerly, they will be a little bit fresh at times during the day but they should generally average 15 to 25 km/h,” he said.

The temperature in Bendigo had dropped below 20 degrees by 8pm.