The Buffalo Lake Road Fire started at 2030 on Tuesday, August 14, 2012 and grew quickly due to high winds burning approximately 7,800 acres by the evening of August 15th. The lightning caused fire eventually grew to 11,299 acres and was fully contained on Sunday August 19th.
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Deaths and injuries are direct and indirect together, as the offices filed them. Damage is property and crops in the dollars of the year, not adjusted for inflation, and only where an office estimated it.
The episode as NWS OTX wrote it up.
The Buffalo Lake Road Fire started at 2030 on Tuesday, August 14, 2012 and grew quickly due to high winds burning approximately 7,800 acres by the evening of August 15th. The lightning caused fire eventually grew to 11,299 acres and was fully contained on Sunday August 19th. The fire was located approximately 5 miles north of Coulee Dam, WA and burned through grass, shrubs, bitter brush, and pockets of scattered timber. Nine homes and the communities of Elmer City and Coulee Dam were threatened. Two outbuildings (barns) were burned.
The local office's own words before the first event, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.
NWS Spokane, WA wrote its last area forecast discussion before the first event at Aug 14, 3:24 PM PST, 4 hours 6 minutes earlier.
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPOKANE WA 424 PM PDT Tue Aug 14 2012 .SYNOPSIS... Breezy and dry but slightly cooler conditions will prevail tonight and Wednesday. Another warming trend into the 90s over most of the region will begin on Thursday and last through Saturday with dry and benign weather. Saturday night and Sunday w weather disturbance will bring a chance of thunderstorms to the area...followed by a slight cool down early next week. && .DISCUSSION... Tonight through Wednesday morning...The forecast area is under the influence of a northwesterly flow regime with a Canadian upper level short wave brushing by the region. Latest models are in good agreement in transiting this feature eastward tonight and into Montana on Wednesday. the dynamic region of this wave will remain north of the border with only a small chance of an evening thunderstorm or overnight showers clipping the extreme northeast corner of the forecast area. The subsidence area in the wake of this wave will promote a building surface high pressure over British Columbia which will create a strong north to south gradient over the northern zones. Thus the genesis of the main forecast issue for the next 24 hours. Breezy and gusty conditions will begin in the Okanogan Valley in the next few hours and down the Purcell trench into the Coeur d'Alene and Spokane area by dawn tomorrow. While winds will increase late this afternoon down the Okanogan...it is expected that surface dew points will remain high enough so that minimum RH will barely flirt with Red Flag Wind/RH criteria for a couple hours in the early evening before RHs recover above critical values. At this time no fire weather highlights are expected given only marginal confidence of a brief period of critical conditions. Meanwhile...in the Kittitas Valley breezy and gusty westerly conditions will also continue into this evening before winds begin to turn more northerly overnight...which is a less favorable direction for enhanced velocity from terrain constriction than the westerly flow of the last 24 hours. By morning the gradient will be favorable for very breezy and gusty winds down the Purcell Trench...but by this time RH values will be well above critical thresholds in the Spokane/CDA area. Wednesday through Friday...Other than enhanced northerly winds...the main effect of this dry Canadian cool front will be to moderate the well above average temperatures of the last few days to merely slightly above normal on Wednesday. A dry and stable air mass will suppress any appreciable cloud development...with correspondingly null precipitation chances. Thursday and Friday the forecast area will come under the influence of a strongly building ridge aloft with a re-establishment of a strong surface thermal trough over the west side on Thursday...jumping the Cascades to the Basin on Friday. Once again...the air mass will be dry and stable fro no precipitation...and temperatures will steadily climb back to well above normal with low to mid 90s common and even a couple triple digit readings probable in the L-C Valley and deep basin. /Fugazzi Friday night through Sunday: The main story for this period will be the hot temperatures on Saturday as a strong ridge of high pressure builds in over the region followed by a shortwave trough of lower pressure that breaks down the ridge and increases our chances for convection. The ECMWF model continues to show stronger ridging at 500 mbs compared to the GFS and Canadian model runs, which are more similar to each other. The ECMWF model shows a 588 dm height contour at 500 mbs as far north as Spokane whereas the other two models bring this contour only as far north as Lewiston. The strength of the ridge will be the main determining factor for how hot temperatures will get around the region this Saturday. 850 mb temperatures off the ECMWF for Saturday afternoon show 23 Celsius from the east slopes of the Cascades to 27 Celsius over into the Idaho Panhandle. The latest GFS and Canadian solutions are about 2-4 Celsius cooler than the ECMWF. Both the ECMWF and the GFS models have been fairly consistent, but the ECMWF has better verification scores farther out in the extended. Thus I leaned further toward the ECMWF than the GFS with high temperatures into the upper 90s and near 100 degrees or warmer for much of the lower elevations this Saturday. We are then looking for the ridge to break down on Saturday night as a fairly dynamic shortwave trough moves into the Northwest. Models have come in better agreement on timing. The best dynamics with this system will be west of the Cascades eastward toward the western basin and up into the Okanogan Highlands. This the general area where I think we will see our best shot for more widespread scattered thunderstorm activity from Saturday night into Sunday morning. Lift associated with the base of the shortwave is bit weaker further east, but I do expect that we will at least see a chance for some isolated thunderstorms across much of eastern WA and into the ID Panhandle. Thunderstorms may initially start out fairly dry with high bases; although, moisture will be increase through Saturday night. Due to the high base of these thunderstorms, we could see some gusty outflow winds due to evaporative cooling effects as precipitation falls into a dry sub-layer beneath the base of the thunderstorms. Sunday night through Tuesday: By Sunday night, chances for thunderstorms will be decreasing as the shortwave trough moves off to the northeast. The flow pattern will shift from a southerly to southwesterly direction. We will hold on to some upper level instability over extreme eastern WA and into the Idaho Panhandle. Any little vort max or disturbance in the southwest flow pattern could kick off some continued thunderstorm activity through at least Monday night. Models really begin to diverge by the beginning of next week. The GFS model brings a trough of lower pressure over the western United States off the eastern Pacific and shifts the high pressure ridge back toward the Rockies and central United States. The ECMWF model, on the other hand, builds the ridge that gives us our hot temperatures on Saturday back over the region. The ECMWF seems to be the outlier when comparing its solution to the ensemble means of both the GFS and ECMWF. Thus, I preferred to keep us under a southwesterly flow pattern between the trough in the eastern Pacific and ridging to our east. This idea keeps our high temperatures closer to seasonal averages or slightly above in the mid to upper 80s for most valley locations on Monday and Tuesday. /SVH && .AVIATION... 00z TAFs: VFR conditions expected at all TAF sites through 00Z Wednesday. A dry and stable air mass will suppress cloud development over the region. Smoke from a large fire near KELN may create brief MVFR visibilities at KEAT and KMWH...but winds will be consistently breezy and the air mass should remain well mixed through tonight and Wednesday...with this threat minimal and not worth mentioning in the TAFs. /MJF && .PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS... Spokane 61 84 55 88 58 93 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Coeur d'Alene 59 84 50 88 53 91 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Pullman 53 85 49 88 52 92 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Lewiston 64 94 60 96 63 100 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Colville 56 90 51 92 54 96 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Sandpoint 54 82 46 86 49 88 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Kellogg 55 83 47 85 50 87 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Moses Lake 62 91 61 93 64 99 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Wenatchee 65 91 62 95 65 99 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 Omak 60 91 58 94 61 97 / 0 0 0 0 0 0 && .OTX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... ID...None. WA...None. &&
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPOKANE WA 603 AM PDT TUE AUG 14 2012 IDZ001>004-026-027-WAZ031>038-041>044-151315- NORTHERN PANHANDLE-COEUR D'ALENE AREA-IDAHO PALOUSE- CENTRAL PANHANDLE MOUNTAINS-LEWISTON AREA- LEWIS AND SOUTHERN NEZ PERCE COUNTIES-NORTHEAST BLUE MOUNTAINS- LOWER GARFIELD AND ASOTIN COUNTIES-WASHINGTON PALOUSE- MOSES LAKE AREA-UPPER COLUMBIA BASIN-SPOKANE AREA- NORTHEAST MOUNTAINS-OKANOGAN HIGHLANDS-WENATCHEE AREA- EAST SLOPES NORTHERN CASCADES-OKANOGAN VALLEY-WATERVILLE PLATEAU- 603 AM PDT TUE AUG 14 2012 THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR PORTIONS OF NORTH IDAHO... NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO...CENTRAL WASHINGTON...EAST CENTRAL WASHINGTON...NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON...NORTHEAST WASHINGTON AND SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON. .DAY ONE...TODAY AND TONIGHT NO HAZARDOUS WEATHER IS EXPECTED AT THIS TIME. .DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...WEDNESDAY THROUGH MONDAY NO HAZARDOUS WEATHER IS EXPECTED AT THIS TIME.
The national radar mosaic for the moment the first event began.
1 wildfire. Local standard time, as filed.
After NWS Directive 10-1605, the rules offices file Storm Data by.
Every storm in Washington in 2012Every state in 2012This day in weather historyWarnings in Washington, August 2012
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database, compiled from the National Weather Service’s monthly Storm Data. Complete through 2026-06; NCEI adds each month about 75 days after it ends and revises past years a few times a year. Rebuilt 2026-09-24. Each event’s entry at NCEI: 404776.