Strange lights in the sky.

My girlfriend and I were sitting out on our porch last night around 11:30 PM, enjoying a cup of tea and having our usual discussions of life. The sky was clear, a few clouds peeking out on the horizon, but the majority of the night sky was brilliant with stars. We live on a farm, about 40 miles from the nearest urban area, so light pollution isn't a concern in the least.
In the middle of our discussion we should a bright light out of the corner of our eyes flash, then our power blinked out a couple times and came back on. Knowing that there wasn't a chance of a storm, I had assumed someone had hit a power line, blowing up a transformer. I had witnessed a couple years ago a man driving a truck in front of me, he had a heartattack in the middle of making a turn, his foot slammed on the gas pedal, and he drove straight into a power line, blowing up a transformer, and the blast from the transformer seemed to light the entire sky up. So, that was my assumption, and we continued talking. The flash went off again, power blinked out a couple times, came back on. This made us curious at this point. So, we stepped off the porch so we could see a better view of the sky, waited a few minutes, and it happened again, us noticing that it had a mild purple tint to the flash, and it lit up the entire sky for the split second, from horizon to horizon. I started my stop watch on my cellphone afterwards, and in about 3 minutes and 20 seconds it happened again, same purple tint, same power problems.
All together it happened 9 times, each time it was spaced approximately 3 minutes apart. The last flash of light had a strong pink tint to it though.
Could this have been just heat lightning?
Very curious, thank you to anyone who may have some information.

Maybe it was a solar storm it's been slamming earths magnetic field for a few days now.
Do you live near Northern Hemisphere?

"
Solar activity

G 2

Moderate


Power systems: high-latitude power systems may experience voltage alarms, long-duration storms may cause transformer damage.

Spacecraft operations: corrective actions to orientation may be required by ground control; possible changes in drag affect orbit predictions."

Other systems: HF radio propagation can fade at higher latitudes, and aurora has been seen as low as New York and Idaho (typically 55° geomagnetic lat.)**. "

I live in upstate New York. I'll look into that. Thank you.
It hasn't happened since, but it really was a beautiful show for the time period it happened.. I've been keeping my eyes peeled for it again.

reply to post by sleepypoet


No problem but I won't rule out other possibilities.
And if it's a urban area you might seen that neat light show in skies

Auroras in Canada

Valid From: 2011 May 29 0515 UTC
Valid To: 2011 May 29 1600 UTC
Warning Condition: Persistence
NOAA Scale: G2 - Moderate

So if it's UTC -07 out there.
G2 class storm lasted around 11 hours
from 10:15 PM to 11:00 AM if I got this right.