“I didn’t even hear it fall, the storm hit really hard,” resident Peter Thompson said. 

“I was looking out the front door at the storm, I saw rain hammering down and then when I looked at the backyard, the big tree was down.”

More than 200 trees came down in the Wodonga area during the short and sharp deluge, leading to hundreds of calls for assistance to the Victoria State Emergency Service.

Mr Thompson said his incident damaged fences but not his Skitch Street home.

“It was lucky, we had a caravan sitting there, we moved it last week,” he said,

“And if it was there, the tree would have just completely crushed the caravan.”

Wodonga Golf Club felt the impact of the adverse weather, with a sign saying the course had been closed indefinitely owing to storm damage.

On Tuesday workers were preparing to clear trees away from lines that had come down in the high winds.

Club member Mick Last said he had never seen the course so affected.

“I’ve been a member since 1984 and we’ve had flooding but we’ve never had as many trees down as what there is today,” he said.

The Beechworth-Chiltern road had to be closed on Monday after fallen trees turned it into more like bushland than a thoroughfare.

Chiltern SES volunteers attacked the debris with chainsaws initially and returned to the site on Tuesday to continue the work.

The same day some of the members also attended a rooftop safety course in Wangaratta.

“A great skill if we get another freak storm like yesterday,” Chiltern SES said on its Facebook page.

More than 60 SES volunteers from Wodonga, Beechworth, Chiltern, Yackandandah, Myrtleford and the regional support unit responded to building damage, trees down, road closures and clearing trees from roads.

NSW SES, Country Fire Authority crews, other emergency services, VicRoads and councils also assisted.

CFA district 24 operations manager Paul King said the rain had not been widespread enough to affect present fire warnings.

“It hasn’t been a knockout blow for the fire season at this stage,” he said. “We’d be looking for another rain event before we terminate the fire danger period.”