A school has been closed for the day and an athletics club has been forced to suspend its competition after a wild storm caused chaos in East Maitland on Monday night.
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Wind gusts of up to 69km/h combined with a heavy downpour to created damage "similar to some East Coast Lows", according to Maitland State Emergency Service.
Hunter Valley Grammar School has been closed for Tuesday after the storm left the school with extensive damage when it passed through about 4.30pm.
"Please DO NOT send children to school; this includes the ELC and K-12. All school activities tomorrow during the day, and tomorrow evening, have been cancelled," the school said on its Facebook page.
East Maitland Little Athletics Club was also hit hard with trees uprooted, damage to the discus cage "beyond repair" and flash flooding among other damage.
"With all this and the poor condition our ground was in from lack of rain we are forced to suspend our comp nights until the EMALAC committee meet to assess damage and consultation with MCC (Maitland City Council)," the club posted to Facebook.
Maitland SES spokesperson Alex Varley said the service received 35 calls for assistance in the East Maitland, Ashtonfield and Metford areas.
She said over the weekend most calls were for leaking roofs but this time was more of a mixed bag with branches down, flash flooding and intense storm damage.
"From reports we received from residents, the intensity of the cell was similar to some East Coast Lows in terms of damage," Ms Varley said.
"We had crews from all over the Hunter helping out. We were trying to triage but it was difficult to triage when they were all priority."
Ms Varley said the Melbourne Street underpass was also underwater for a while, but it did subside reasonably quickly.
Maitland City Council also closed East Maitland Aquatic Centre due to flooding, but the pool reopened on Tuesday morning.
Crews worked well into the night to fix the damage but Ms Varley said they would still be out on Tuesday responding to jobs they could not get to on Monday night.
It follows a big weekend for the SES, which Ms Varley said was unusual for the service in the current climate.
"So far this season we've been doing a lot of bushfire support, so this was a bit of a wake up call," she said.