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.

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.