Erki Väljaots, the Rescue Board's (Päästeamet) Southern Region's operations manager, said downed trees and fallen branches proved the biggest challengers to personnel.

He told ERR: "Today's storm was interesting as it came from Valga before 2 p.m. then moved towards Tartu. The main challenges caused by the storm winds came in the areas of Valga, Elva, Rõngu, and Tartu."

"This created a lot of work for both professional and volunteer fire crews in those regions. Up to 100 incidents have been recorded, according to initial estimates," he went on.

As of around 3:30 p.m., approximately 10,000 customers were without electricity. By p.m., the figure had dropped to fewer than 4,000.

The highest number of outages by Sunday evening were seen in Tartu County, with around 3,400 customers affected.

In Võru County, 260 customers were still without power, and on Piirissaar island, at the southern tip of Peipsi järv, 109 customers were impacted.

The busiest time for rescuers has now passed. "The most intense period was between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. It is now just a matter of resolving the remaining incidents," Väljaots added.

Elektrilevi's outages map, updated in real time, displayed a little under 1,500 outages as of the time of writing.

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