Wild weather causes damage across the state

Hundreds of homes have been plunged into darkness as tens of thousands of lightning strikes are recorded across the state – with wild weather causing havoc this Easter long weekend.

Tens of thousands of lightning strikes have struck South Australia as wild weather continues to cause sweeping damage this Easter long weekend.

Flinders Ranges resident Marie Simpson had been without power for almost 19 hours after a lightning strike caused her Yatina home to blackout.

“We have four young children,” Ms Simpson said.

“We have a generator which we were able to use from this morning for a few hours.”

SA Power Network spokesperson said the outage affected 117 customers across the southern Flinders Ranges.

The outage which began at 5.55pm Thursday was repaired for 109 customers at 3.30am Friday leaving a remaining eight customers waiting until 12.48pm.

Hail in the Flinders Ranges. Picture: Supplied

Hail at Flinders Ranges property Picture: Supplied

Ms Simpson said it began hailing on Thursday afternoon for about 15 minutes, damaging her pergola and causing her roof to leak.

“We get hail around here a lot but they were about a centimetre-round balls, which is pretty significant,” she said.

The Bureau of Meteorology's senior meteorologist Simon Timcke said in the 24 hours to 9am Friday, the eastern district experienced the heaviest rainfall across the state with some parts reaching over 25mm of rain.

Coonawarra experienced 25.4mm of rain, Keith in the state’s upper South East recorded 22.8mm, and Mount Gambier recorded 20.8mm.

“Since 9am we’ve had fairly regular showers again over the southern agricultural area and we’ve had a few spots pick up to the order of 5 to 10mm,” he said.

Adelaide CBD recorded 5.4mm since 9am on Friday, and 6.8mm in the 24 hours up to 9am, while Adelaide Airport experienced 4.6mm of rainfall.

Mr Timcke said there were quite a few thunderstorms across the state, which cleared away early Friday morning.

“There was quite a lot of lightning during the late afternoon and evening period yesterday,” he said.

“In the (last) 24 hours there have been about 21,000 lightning strikes over the state with the bulk of them over the eastern districts and the mid-north.”

Emergency services busy responding to a fallen tree at Stonyfell Picture: 7NEWS

A freak storm that ripped through the Riverland left Waikerie holiday makers with flooded campsites and broken gazebos.

Camper John Vince described to 7NEWS how his family’s campsite was flooded by six inches of rain water.

“Our son’s swag was floating away,” he said.

Another three young campers were walking the main streets of Waikerie when the storm hit, with one of the men taking refuge in a public phone box and another saving a drowning pigeon.

When they arrived back at their campsite, it had been destroyed by the wild weather.

“The gazebo that we had was stuck on top of his car, scratched up his whole entire car,” one of group said.

Camper Chrissy Hutchings told 7NEWS she was fearful her caravan roof would “cave in” after “torrential rain” hit the caravan park.

“It was pretty scary,” she said.

Emergency services busy responding to a fallen tree at Stonyfell Picture: 7NEWS

From 4pm Thursday to 2.30pm Friday, the State Emergency Services were called out to 35 emergencies across the state, including 20 trees down.

Mr Timcke said the state didn’t experience any “damaging winds” with an average wind range between 40km/h to 50km/h.

Despite a rainy morning, Mr Timcke said we can expect a bit of sunshine which will gradually increase through the weekend.

“We will see the showers ease and the winds ease but there still will be a few showers around for the rest of Friday and for Saturday but the showers less frequent on Sunday and Monday.”