More storms coming after thousands lose power during damaging winds across Adelaide

Another storm system with the potential to be as bad as last night's is set to hit next week, after gale-force winds left thousands without power, ripped off roofs, felled Stobie poles and left apple growers devastated.

• Roof blown off Glenelg North apartment, lifesaving championships cancelled
• Gallery: See the pics of the storm's destruction

Another storm system with the potential to be as bad as Wednesday night is predicted to hit next week, after gale-force winds left tens of thousands of homes without power, ripped off roofs, felled Stobie poles and left apple growers devastated.

The weather bureau warned that while the storm had passed, three similar low- pressure systems will form off the coast in the middle of next week. An intense low-pressure system south of Kangaroo Island caused gale-force winds and potentially catastrophic tidal events on Wednesday evening.

Power outages

An SA Power Networks spokesman said that hundreds of crew members were responding to incidents to try to return power to as many properties as possible. “It’s very unusual to have as many small outages as this,” he said. “It takes the same amount of time to restore power to 60 customers as it does to 2000.”

Customers were being advised of estimated restoration times via text messages. At the height of the storm at midnight on Wednesday, nearly 40,000 homes were without power - a total of 100,000 were affected over the whole day.

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About 3000 properties in St Peters and in the state's east, who were still without power overnight, had their services restored by 8.30am on Friday.

Winds have died down in Adelaide for now, with speeds expected to reach just 25 km/h, easing up throughout the day, with a top of 19C forecast and a possible morning shower.

Check the list of outages here.

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In pictures: Storm damage across Adelaide

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Apple growers left shattered

Apple growers in the Adelaide Hills are counting the cost of Thursday's wild weather.

Lenswood Apples chair Iain Evans said growers were "devastated" as they were still recovering from being hit by hail last October.

He said growers would know more about what the future held in a few weeks but it looked like some crops would be sprayed off and left to drop - as they won't be worth picking - and others would be used for juicing.

"It’s going to be another nightmare year for the apple industry," Mr Evans told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning.

"All we can ask the public to do is when they buy more apples they buy Adelaide Hills apples."

He said apples marked by hail will still eat fine, "they just don’t look as attractive".

SA Apple and Pear Growers Association chief executive Susie Green said they were “still trying to get a gauge of the damage, but it’s quite similar to last year. It does seem fairly widespread”.

The damage

SES chief of staff Derren Halleday said crews had responded to 1200 call-outs since the storm begun, with more than 500 volunteers responding. He said there had been significant damage particularly in the southern suburbs.

"It was a high workload," Mr Halleday said. "Crews worked tirelessly through the night in some really nasty conditions, on roofs and battling the elements and with chainsaws to secure some houses and roofs."

Some houses in the Adelaide Hills and in the southern suburbs have been damaged from falling trees, while in the west, a roof flew off a heritage listed house in Grange.

In Glenelg North, residents have been left temporarily homeless after the roof blew off a block of units.

Surinder Kumar in his Glenelg North apartment, where the roof was blown off on Wednesday night. Picture: Russell Millard/AAP

A Goolwa resident discovered a neighbour’s verandah had become detached and landed in the backyard of their Bristow Smith Avenue house about 12.30am.

And a carport was blown over and came to a rest against a neighbour’s fence on Glenburnie St, Seaton about 1.40am.

Winds were even strong enough to blow over a stobie pole on Seaview Rd in Henley Beach overnight.

Strong winds blow over a stobie pole in Henley Beach. Picture: Con Polychronis

A worse catastrophe averted

Bureau of Meteorology Senior Meteorologist Brett Gage said the storm front also caused a potentially catastrophic tidal event. “We got lucky yesterday,” he said. “We had a tidal anomaly peak at 1.6m higher than the normal lunar tide. But luckily that occurred at low tide, at about 10 or 11pm. Had that occurred at 5pm, we could have had catastrophic circumstances for the beachside suburbs, particularly the northern suburbs, which are prone to flooding.”

Mr Gage said that while the worst was over for this week, three low-pressure systems approaching Adelaide next week were causing the Bureau concern. “There are another three low-pressure systems expected to move across us next week,” he said. “We are not expecting anything to be as intense as this one, but a couple of them, which will be moving across the south of the state on Wednesday and Thursday, could cause a problem.”

Adelaide Airport experienced "persistent gales" between 9pm on Wednesday night and 2am on Thursday morning, says senior forecaster Simon Ching.

"[There were] multiple readings of gusts of up to 53 knots, which translates to about 98 km/h over the Adelaide Airport and Edinburgh Airport," he said.

Overnight, 15.4mm of rain fell in Adelaide and 34.8mm fell in Mount Lofty.

Lifesaving World Championships cancelled

The conditions caused more than $250,000 damage to the Lifesaving World Championships at Glenelg and forced the cancellation of all ocean events yesterday. Volunteers, who had helped rebuild the competition site after strong winds on Monday night, arrived to find tents in shreds, the graded running track resembled sand dunes, and half the covering of the grandstand had been torn off.

Surf Lifesaving SA president John Baker said when the 100km/h-plus winds hit, volunteers scrambled to “batten the hatches” and save what they could. “These kinds of conditions aren’t uncommon for beach events, so everyone knew what they had to do,” he said. “But now the damage is up near the $250,000-mark and that's just the start. We are having to take down part of the grandstand and get bulldozers and graders in to repair the beach.”

Mr Baker and the rest of the championships board are now in negotiations with the state and federal governments for financial relief following the unexpected storm. “The reaction has certainly been positive at this stage,” Mr Baker said. The ocean events will continue today, while the pool and beach competitions have been unaffected.