Branches down, pot plants turned over and lightning strikes too close for comfort - the storm last night came in with a bang and lit up the sky.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Hunter SES Unit received about 120 calls - some were still coming through on Wednesday morning as residents attempted to clean up.
About 25 of those calls were for help in the Maitland area and about the same number came from Cessnock.
But no-one suffered more than Glenn Smurthwaite of Lochinvar who said a tree come down on his caravan and Pajero.
"We were lucky, it could so easily have taken the house," he said.
"I was working in the shed at the time repairing a gate and I had the doors closed, so I had no the tree had come down.
"But then my wife Louise and daughters Jasmine and Tanayah came up and said the tree had fallen. It must have been scary for them, their eyes were like dinner plates."
Mr Smurthwaite said he had just had the roof of the house resealed and that the tips of the ironbark tree had just touched the guttering, but not the roof.
He aid the caravan was destroyed and he was waiting for the Pajero to be assessed but that both were fully insured.
His neighbour, Daniel Johnson inspected the scene and said it was definitely a lightning strike.
"The bark was burnt on the side of the trunk, one side of the tree was black," he said.
Mr Johnson, who admits to chasing storms for great pictures, said it would be "four or five years" since he's seen storm of such ferocity.
"There was lightning all around," he said. "It was really close."
By mid afternoon the SES crew had arrived, cut up the tree and turned into mulch.
Right across the region tree branches, roof damage, hail the size of marbles in East Maitland and flash flooding in Church Street Maitland were among the reasons the SES were called out.
A trampoline went flying into the air and smashed into a neighbour's roof, with the velocity of the wind putting the poles through the roof tiles.
A caravan was left on its roof at Louth Park, backyards at East Maitland were full of hail and the intense thunder and lightning had some of the city's pooches feeling terrified.
Maitland Airport recorded wind speeds of 100 km/h during the storm with speeds around the region not far behind.
So is this a taste of what is to come this summer?
Get ready to batten down the hatches more often. That's the advice from Maitland SES community engagement officer Alex Varley who said the La Nina is going to bring more volatile storms.
But don't just expect to see a lot of rain. She said a storm could deliver solely strong winds or hail, so expect anything.
"It was a great taste of what to expect. This storm brought a lot more wind than rain and we haven't seen that for a while," Ms Varley said.
"We always get trampolines after trampolines have been blown around. A lot of houses in the new estates have small backyards and so there isn't anyway to move things like trampolines. Try to weigh it down with something heavy and peg it down or tie it down."
