ESA, bureau warn of extra rain and chance of more trees coming down

It also warned of the chance of more rain on Monday evening.

"The ACT Emergency Services Agency and Bureau of Meteorology are closely monitoring for thunderstorm activity. Thunderstorms are not currently forecast to impact the urban areas of the ACT," the agency said about 5pm.

"Despite this, we know that many homes and buildings may have temporary repairs following Friday's storm, so encourage the community to take care around existing damage."

It said continued rainfall could increase soil moisture, and make trees more likely to fall.

"If you need assistance during a storm or flood, call the ACT State Emergency Service on 132 500," it said.

The agency said crews were still responding to requests for help as they are received.

"In an emergency, crews from the ACT State Emergency Service will make temporary repairs to keep everyone safe," it said.

"After the incident, it's up to the homeowner or insurer to arrange someone to fix the damage."

As of 3.30pm, the ACT Emergency Service Agency received 65 calls on Monday. Many were in relation to downed trees, taking the number of requests for help in the wake of the severe weather to 1030.

An agency spokesperson said the latest requests for help could be from Canberrans who were away for the weekend and have returned to find their home damaged.

Clean-up from the severe thunderstorm that swept through Canberra on Friday is expected to take the remainder of the week, with some jobs involving fallen trees taking crews hours to complete.

ACT SES incident controller Tammy Bennett said North Canberra, Tuggeranong, Gungahlin and Belconnen were the hardest hit.

"We expect that operations will continue throughout the remainder of the week," she said.

"Jobs are prioritised in the urgency, the risk, the hazard to the homeowner, to the community, the crews will get to as many homes as possible."

ACT Emergency Services Agency interim commissioner Wayne Phillips said about 300 people have been involved in the clean up, most doing multiple shifts.

He said two crews from Queanbeyan SES were helping on Saturday and Sunday, and one on Monday.

Mr Phillips said as of Monday afternoon, there were fewer than 200 outstanding jobs.

Those who no longer needed assistance are urged get in touch with the ESA so the agency could re-prioritise assistance.

Following the storm, about 9000 households were without power due to trees coming down on powerlines and damaged infrastructure but EvoEnergy said as of Monday morning it had just over 100 customers without power.

Daniel Iglesias, executive branch manager of City Presentation at Transport Canberra and City Services, urged those waiting for an arborist to be patient and avoid doing tree surgery work themselves, despite the possibility that some areas won't be looked at before Christmas.

He told journalists on Monday clean up was shifting to a recovery phase but his crews were still working hard to get through hundreds of jobs, including 200 that have come through via the SES.

"Our crews will be working hard all through the Christmas New Year period to get through that backlog," he said.

"We're a city of trees, we've got over 800,000 of them. And whilst we've only had ... a tiny fraction of 1 per cent that have been affected by the storm, it's going to take us time to get through it.

"What [our crews] are doing at the moment is they're triaging, they're looking at all the jobs that are coming through the system, and then making decisions about which ones are the most urgent, which ones ... represent the most risk to the community."

Damaging winds struck the capital Friday evening around the time the Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe thunderstorm warning just before 8pm.

Senior meteorologist Neale Fraser acknowledged the warning for metropolitan areas "wasn't very timely".

He said a severe thunderstorm warning was issued just after 7pm for the southern half of the ACT but a full warning covering the entire territory was issued just before 8pm.

"They were forecasting thunderstorms for Canberra, it's just whether they were severe or not. At the time, they ... were more concerned about the southern half of the ACT.

"It's only when that station to the west, northwest of the ACT got a big wind gust that they started to react to that and they issued the warning."

"Quite often warnings go out and nothing happens and people think 'oh, they're over warning'. You're trying to predict the future, so you can't ever be totally certain what's going to happen. In this case, we under-warned for it."

As electricity distributor Evoenergy sought to restore power to homes across the territory, residents affected by outages were able to access a community support hub at Melba Copland Secondary School.

Mr Philips said more than 50 people came through the hub on Sunday.

"We had people coming in, charging phones, dumping food was a big reason - Christmas food," Mr Phillips said.

"Unfortunately, I saw that hams and turkeys, early buying of that, that was terrible.

"Free charging and getting some water but really had some people just coming in for a chat, catching up with Evoenergy, catching up with representatives of the ESA just to find out what was going on firsthand."

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Showers are forecast for Wednesday and Thursday but temperatures are expected to stay above 30 for the remainder of the week.