Crews on standby as wild weather heads north
Updated
Usually a calm entrance to the Kianinny boat ramp near Tathra (ABC South East NSW: Bill Brown)
Emergency crews are on standby as severe weather continues to lash the New South Wales south coast and a cluster of low pressure systems heads north toward Wollongong and Sydney.
Winds of up to 120 kilometres per hour have hit parts of the coast, damaging property and causing large-scale blackouts.
The low pressure system has moved further up the coast and is now sitting over Ulladulla and Bateman's Bay, where there has been reported of wind gusts of 95 kilometres per hour.
A forecaster at the Bureau says the winds are expected to worsen in the area.
Rob Webb from the Bureau of Meteorology says the system will gradually move north but the winds will weaken.
"The winds will extend up towards places like Wollongong, but we're expecting them to lose a lot of their bite by the time that does occur," he said.
New South Wales Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan is warning people south of Sydney to be prepared as the storm moves further up the coast.
"We just reiterate the warning to people not to go into flooded waterways or creeks, make sure they're staying a bit back from the coast, obviously the waves on the coast are pretty severe," he said.
Earlier today a surfer was taken to hospital with suspected spinal injuries at Cronulla in Sydney's south.
The State Emergency Service says they've had around 230 calls for help, with Narooma and Bermagui the worst hit towns. The SES number is 132 500.
SES spokesman Colin Johnson says extra crews are travelling from Sydney and the Southern Highlands.
"The low is very slow at the moment and it's still dumping rain right across the southern south-east section of New South Wales," he said.
"Calls for assistance have been focused from Moruya or Batemans Bay south to even as far as Eden."
Mr Johnson says teams from other areas around the state are providing assistance, and more are on stand-by as the low heads toward Wollongong.
"As the low moves north our focus of attention of course will start moving into the more populous areas of our region," he said.
He says the low will reach the Wollongong area in the next 12 to 18 hours.
Peter Higgins from the SES says some houses have been damaged.
"There has been some unroofing but not complete houses lost," he said.
Mr Higgins says communities will experience a calm patch before wind and rain re-intensifies.
"This low has a number of cells that will come across land at different points along the south coast," he said.
"The communities will have an impact of heaving rain or wind or both, then there may be a lull, then there may be a follow on after that."
The weather bureau says Narooma, Moruya and Bateman's Bay were copping the brunt of the wild weather this afternoon.
The Bureau of Meteorology's Gina Laurie says there is still a chance of flash flooding later today.
"There is still a possibility that the rain will pick up through the afternoon and potentially cause some flash flooding in some areas," she said.
She says the low pressure system is due to cross the coast late this afternoon.
"It's expected it will be somewhere in the north part of the south coast or possibly parts of the Illawarra, that would be late this afternoon," she said.
"That's when we're expecting the more serious weather to impact parts of the Illawarra."
The ABC's Thomas Oriti, reporting from Bega on the far south coast, described some of the damage.
"There's a lot of debris on the road, the arms of trees all over the place, very, very wet and gusty," he said.
"Power is flicking on and off quite often. We have heard that all the way down the coast from towns such as Quaama to Eden, the power is out completely."
Electricity wires have collapsed onto local roads and more than 9,000 people have been left without power in the Eden, Bega, Bodalla and Narooma areas.
Country Energy says it has returned power to 2,000 Bombala homes, but 2,000 more in Tuross Heads remain blacked-out.
The energy supplier says the chances of everyone getting power back on before nightfall are very remote.
The Princes Highway is blocked at various locations.
Road closures
Earlier today the wild weather caused road closures in the worst-affected areas of the south coast between Bega and Ulladulla.
Police Inspector Jason Edmunds from the South Coast Local Area Command says the Princes Highway is closed at Cobargo and there is very limited access at Bodalla.
He says fallen trees are blocking the Snowy Mountains Highway at Brown Mountain and crews from the local council are working with the RTA to clear the roads.
"We're all doing the best we can at the moment, with the conditions remaining the same and trees still coming down at different places," he said.
"We're advising motorists to avoid unnecessary travel and certainly to be very careful of their speeds given the fact that they wont know what's around the next corner."
New South Wales Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan says it is too early to tell how much damage the storms are causing.
"It wouldn't be the worst that we've ever seen but it's certainly causing some damage at the moment," he said.
"[It's] hard to know until it finishes exactly what that total damage will be, about 160 calls is not massive at the moment but we are expecting that to increase over the day as the storm progresses north up the coast."
A flood watch is in place for the Bega, Moruya, Tuross and Shoalhaven rivers and the weather bureau is warning of possible flash flooding at Wollongong and other areas below the Illawarra escarpment.
The owner of a bed and breakfast at Eden, Fay Speer, says she has had power outages, heavy rain and strong winds.
"I'm not sure how much rain we had but it absolutely teemed all night and then the winds came up early this morning," she said.
"Now we've had a couple of blackouts early this morning and the seas are very, very rough."
Farmer James Thomson lives on a property between Narooma and Moruya and says he is preparing for more heavy rain.
"It had been a little bit slacked off there, but it's just coming in really heavy now," he said.
"It was windy, the wind has backed off now, but around 7 and before that it was just a howling gale.
"I think there's a fair bit of rain yet to come by the look of it, out to the west there."
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