Newcastle was granted a slight reprieve from a scorching three-day heatwave blanketing much of the state on Friday afternoon. Temperatures plummeted under a cloudy turn blown by strong southwesterly winds ripping past Nobbys heads.
The Bureau of Meteorology's weather station at Nobbys measured gusts up to 70km/h in the late afternoon as State Emergency Service (SES) crews responded to nearly a dozen calls for assistance around the region.
Crews helped secure a roof at Tarro and remove a fallen tree from a fence, among a handful of other callouts at Maitland, Port Stephens, Cessnock and Dungog, as well as Mayfield West in the city.
The SES said on Saturday that the 11 Hunter tasks added to more than 150 callouts around the state overnight but there were no reports of significant damage or injury.
Crews were eyeing forecasts for strong rain in the northeastern parts of the state at the weekend, the service said. The rain's tail-end could impact areas around the top of the Hunter Valley.
On Saturday, temperatures ranged in the low-to-mid 20s about the Hunter, with tops of 28 degrees at Scone falling to as low as 20 degrees at Mangrove Mountain on the Central Coast.
Newcastle was smothered under a warm blanket of cloud cover and tops of 27 degrees on Saturday afternoon, with the chance of a shower on Sunday before temperatures were expected to climb back into the 30s with partly cloudy conditions through the week ahead.
Similar conditions were expected in the valley, with tops of 36 degrees expected on Friday next week at Singleton, 37 degrees and sunny at Muswellbrook and Scone, and 33 degrees at Maitland after a week of prevailing partly cloudy days.
A severe weather warning was issued for parts of the Northern Tablelands and Mid North Coast just after midday on Saturday, January 27, as an unstable mass of air at the north end of a trough about the north-east of the state was causing severe storms around Armidale and Walcha.
