Damaging winds, averaging 60 to 70 km/h with peak gusts in excess of 90 km/h, tore across the elevated areas of the Northern Tablelands.

Many large trees with roots unable to anchor them in the rain-sodden soil were simply blown over.

At one point on Friday afternoon, more than 8,000 customers were without power across the region, including 2,028 homes and businesses in Walcha, 4,792 customers in Inverell, 1,441 customers in Glen Innes, and 620 homes and businesses in Uralla.

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"Essential Energy crews worked as quickly as safety allowed to isolate sections of the electricity network to restore power to as many customers as possible, before completing repairs and restoring power to all remaining customers," said Essential Energy community relations manager Bronya Pressler.

"There were also a number of outages affecting smaller numbers of customers as storms swept across the region."

The majority of these unplanned outages were due to strong winds bringing down trees and, in turn, powerlines.

On Friday, wind speeds of 87km/h were recorded at Armidale Airport at 2.30pm, while Glen Innes recorded 95 km/h at 3.31pm.

The Armidale SES unit received a total of 40 requests for help between Friday and Sunday. Two homes were damaged, but no trees fell on cars, and nobody was hurt.

"The wind plus the rain ensured a hectic weekend for the local SES," Armidale SES unit commander Jock Campbell told the Armidale Express on Monday.

"Mostly, we were clearing fallen trees, including one which came down on the rail tracks at Uralla at Friday lunchtime," Mr Campbell said.

"Trains were suspended for about two hours while we removed the tree, and engineers assessed the damage."

In Glen Innes, the SES responded to several calls, including the local high school whose quadrangle shade sails were ripped off along with four sheets of roofing tin.

"We did also have a tree come down on a house, but we got through the strong winds fairly well, really," said Glen Innes SES unit commander Peter Ritter.

"A thing a lot of people don't realise is that those trees are fairly tall, but they're very shallow-rooted, and it doesn't take much for them to topple over. Particularly with that strong wind on top of all that water we had.

Mr Ritter said it was important people ensured trees near buildings and power lines were trimmed back.

"Get an arborist in and get them trimmed," Mr Ritter said.

"It is well worth the money to prevent the damage to your home."

The strong and gusty northwest to westerly winds extended across northeastern NSW in the wake of a low-pressure system.

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