A SUPER cell thunderstorm felled trees and caused blackouts across Dubbo as hail and damaging winds battered the region on Tuesday night.
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From 7pm until midnight on Tuesday, 12,392 lightning strikes were recorded within 40 kilometres of Dubbo by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).
Of those, 1755 lightning bolts hit the ground.
"Around 20 kilometres north of Dubbo there seems to be a high density of lightning strikes," Weatherzone meteorologist Joel Pippard said of the super cell thunderstorm.
"They're [super cells] the same kind of things that bring a tornado in America, but in Australia it brings very large hail stones, destructive winds and very heavy rainfall," Mr Pippard said.
"They're the most severe type of thunderstorm."
While the BoM's weather station at the airport only recorded 0.2 millimetres of rain and wind gusts of up to 46km/h during the storm, Mr Pippard said it was a very different story for areas north of the city.
"Areas north of a super cell will get more rain, they would have got around 20 millimetres of rain in that area," he said.
"It didn't stick around for too long, there was quite a lot of lightning in quite a short amount of time."
Two thunderstorms hit Dubbo on Tuesday - a smaller one at 10pm and then the super cell at 11pm.
Despite the very high number of lightning strikes during the thunderstorm, NSW Rural Fire Service Orana zone Superintendent Lyndon Wieland said no new fires were ignited.
Volunteer firefighters were, however, called out to numerous storm damage incidents and trees down in areas north-east of the Dubbo local government area.
Meanwhile, Supt Wieland said bushland areas may be smouldering following the lightning strikes and he urged the community to report any unattended fires to triple-0 immediately.
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