"We were so lucky it fell where it did."

Today, she's standing in front of her Buninyong home, raking twigs and leaves with her partner, after a branch fell onto her garage.

It only damaged a few tiles, she said, which is lucky - she actually turned away the SES when they arrived, saying they had more urgent calls to attend.

According to SES deputy operations controller John Maggi, crews were called to more than 20 jobs last night, mainly trees down, but some building damage.

"We finished up about 2am," he said.

The wind picked up on Wednesday afternoon, and the storm front arrived about 9pm.

Wind gusts of about 96kmh were recorded at 8.51pm in Ballarat, before thunder and lightning rolled through.

The Bureau of Meteorology recorded 11mm of rain to Thursday morning, and while the temperature didn't drop below 4.6 degrees, the apparent, or 'feels like' temperature, was -4.7 briefly last night.

Senior forecaster Rod Dickson said there was more wild weather to come.

"We're going to see another cold front coming through on Friday, with some cold air over the weekend - we may see some snow on the hills around Ballarat on Friday night to Saturday morning," he said.

"You won't see wind gusts as high as 90kmh today, but it'll still be windy with a few showers."

Ms McDowell said she was glad she'd already bought a lotto ticket.

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