Lighting strike during a summer storm in Melbourne. Photo / Louisa Wright Twitter
Aussies are facing a major clean up after damaging hail, thunderstorms and flash flooding thrashed the state last night.
Cars were destroyed as "golf ball sized" hail stones pelted vehicles and homes.
A car yard in Knox reportedly had up to 180 cars damaged during the freak weather event.
More than 26,000 homes remained without power today — down from 100,000 homes overnight.
A major landslide at Surrey Hills shut down Warrigal Road both ways, with the busy road not expected to re-open before the morning peak.
Outside the city, a massive B-Double truck was blown over after being hit with a massive gust of wind about 7.30pm on Tuesday evening. The Hume Hwy near Benalla and Glenrowan was closed overnight, but has since reopened.
The SES received 1,700 calls for assistance in the last 24 hours — the majority of these were for trees down and building damage.
Since midnight, 37 emergency requests had been received with that number expected to increase as Victorians awake to survey the damage.
The bureau says three to four centimetres of hail had been reported in Nunawading and East Doncaster.
More than 1000 incidents — including damaged buildings, fallen trees and flooding — were recorded on emergency.vic.gov.au yesterday.
Narre Warren South's Terry Poulton said his property was destroyed by the sudden furious downpour.
"It began to really hit at about 6.45pm and damaged parts of my patio and fibreglass out the back," he said.
Mr Poulton said his neighbours bore the brunt of the near 10-minute downpour, with some cars "totalled" in the storms.
"My neighbours daughter parked her car out the front and that's gone. A total write-off," he said.
"It was honestly a bit frightening," he said.
"We got a bit of a warning when some light hail came but shortly afterwards the real stuff hit".
Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Stephen King said the mercury dropped from 37C to 24C in just 10 minutes as the cool change hit Melbourne.
More than 20mm of rain fell in Melbourne alone in about 20 minutes.
The storms also wreaked havoc in country Victoria.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said wind gusts of 90km/h and thunderstorms hit Mildura, leading to significant damage.
Chateau Mildura Winery employee Ashleigh Taylor, was lucky to escape with a minor injury after a shed collapsed onto her car just moments after she had stepped out of it.
Winery owner Lance Milne said: "The roof collapsed onto her car. It smashed the back window and crushed the car roof. She's lucky ... It could have been so much worse."
Yesterday's steamy and stormy weather came after a hot Monday night — at 7am Darwin was the only capital city hotter than Melbourne's temperature of 26.6C.
The overnight low in the city was just 24.6C about 1am, before the temperatures shot back up to 27C by 6am.
Today will hover at 25C with a possible afternoon shower.
Tomorrow will be a mostly sunny day with a top of 25C.
Friday will hit a high of 28C with a hotter top of 29C on Saturday.
A mild top of 24C is expected for Christmas Day.
Simone White, 28, is the fifth tourist to have died after becoming ill last week.