SPOKANE – A rare tornado touched down here Friday during a storm that also brought lightning, hail and heavy rain to northeast Washington.

The tornado touched down in a rural area west of Fairchild Air Force Base about 4:15 p.m., said John Livingstone, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.

Officials were out assessing possible damage Friday night, he said. No injuries were immediately reported.

Lightning may have been to blame for a fire at the Beau Rivage apartment complex in Spokane. Spokane County Fire District Chief Bob Anderson could not immediately confirm that.

But resident Joe LaPorte blamed the storm.

“I was on my computer doing my homework,” LaPorte told The Spokesman-Review newspaper. “I saw that it started raining real hard, and I went to the window to watch. That’s when I saw a flash, heard a loud snap, the building shook, then I saw smoke coming from my bedroom.”

The storm also forced the temporary shutdown of flights leaving Spokane International Airport. After the tornado report, officials evacuated the air traffic control center for about 15 minutes, airport spokesman Todd Woodard said.

The weather only delayed three departures and no arrivals were scheduled during that period, Woodard said.

In the Spokane area, the storm lasted from about 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Livingtone said.

Hail as big as three-quarters of an inch in diameter was reported, along with flooded roads and basements, he said.

“Upwards of an inch” of rain fell in Spokane, he said.

Later in the evening, heavy rain made driving treacherous south of Spokane in the Pullman-Moscow, Idaho, area, he added.

Avista Corp. scrambled to restore power to thousands of customers. Lightning blew out transformers and a substation affecting about 7,500 customers in Spokane and the Colville area, company spokeswoman Robyn Dunlap said. By 8 p.m., power had been restored to all but about 1,100 customers.

At Fairchild, “we got lucky” by not being hit by the tornado, Lt. Ethan Stoker said. But the weather was still dramatic at the base west of Spokane. The ground was covered in dime-sized hail when the tornado hit, and the base sounded emergency sirens.

“We had a lot of wind, but you almost couldn’t hear it because there was so much noise from the hail against the metal roof,” Stoker said.

Washington averages one tornado per year. However, three have been reported in the past three weeks – one on April 27 near Sumas, another in East Wenatchee on Wednesday, and the one near Spokane.