Wild winds and power blackouts disrupted Saturday night dinner plans across Gunnedah at the weekend.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, a wind gust of 126kmh was recorded at Gunnedah Airport at 2.34pm on Saturday.

It was the airport’s highest wind gust for November since 2003, beating the month’s previous maximum of 106kmh posted in 2014.

It was also marginally behind the highest for any month of the year, second only to February 2004 when a 128kmh gust was recorded.

More than 2500 premises lost power across Gunnedah on Saturday afternoon.

An Essential Energy spokesperson said the unplanned outages at 3.30pm were due to storm damage that caused trees to come into contact with powerlines.

“Various parts of Gunnedah were affected, and at the height of the storm, approximately 2534 customers experienced outages. Essential Energy crews were deployed and when it was safe to do so power was able to be restored to the majority of customers by 9.30pm,” the spokesperson said.

A large tree fell on Marquis Street near the high school and trees fell over powerlines on Bloomfield Street.

Some isolated areas of the Gunnedah township were unaffected by the power outages and many residents felt fortunate that power resumed much earlier than expected.

More power interruptions were experienced on Tuesday afternoon. Early indications by Essential Energy showed that the interruption affected about 1200 customers in Gunnedah.

On the precipitation front, 5.4mm of rain fell during Saturday’s storms in Gunnedah and a further 15.4mm was recorded on Sunday.

As of Wednesday, the forecast for Gunnedah this Friday was a high chance of showers, most likely in the morning and afternoon.

On Saturday, there was a high chance of showers, most likely in the afternoon and evening. A thunderstorm was likely in the afternoon and evening.

There was a low (25 per cent) chance of at least 10mm of rain on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Trees fell over powerlines on Bloomfield Street.

Widespread power outages occurred across the Gunnedah area on Saturday afternoon.

Forecast rain for the North West Slopes and Plains for this Sunday.