What was this white flash in the sky?

So there’s this weird thing that happened today that, at first I was convinced was an explosion…lol.

So I’m walking outside this evening, and then everything goes white for like a split second. Kind of like a lightning flash, but a little softer. But it seemed everything flashed white, and I couldn’t tell where it came from. It seemed to have come from EVERYWHERE. I know it sounds like lightning, but this is Winter here…(although I HAVE seen lightning during Winter once, which was very weird)

I attribute this to an explosion because of the following;

I thought it WAS lighting, and I awaited the thunder that would come after. A sound did come, kind of like a huge balloon popping. Except at that point, I attributed it to a snowplow dropping the shovel on concrete. That usually makes a pretty loud noise which also has a strong echo, and it kind of sounded like that. But it wasn’t thunder.

But if this was an explosion, wouldn’t I hear the boom and see the flash at the same time? I’ve never seen any real explosions, so it dawned on me that I have absolutely no idea what one is like, besides what I see in movies, and most of those are probably bs.

The other thing, a minute or so after this white flash, it started to smell like burned plastic and rubber. Smelled gross, like some kind of radioactive ass. But the smell went away pretty quickly. (extremely violent winds today, so maybe the winds took the smell in a direction where I could no longer smell it) Still, if an explosion happened and was so far away, would you even smell it so fast?

There was also a cop car that went racing down the street, to which at first I assumed must have been where this so called explosion was. Except that police car could have been going to a completely unrelated incident, and as I mentioned, I wasn’t able to tell where this even came from at all. :/

Some kids came running to me and asked if they were going nuts, I confirmed that they weren’t nuts. Hell before they came, I thought of asking someone if they saw the same thing as me. I was all like, am I going blind, or nuts or something?

I was pretty sure it was an explosion, but now I’m not sure. I looked up the local news, and saw absolutely NOTHING about this. (but maybe it’s too early for anything to have been reported about it? my sources are all online, and in the paper, but obviously if this was something that deserved paper space, that will be in the following days)

So chances are, was this just some kind of natural phenomena? Something normal that happens with like…I don’t know, space stuff? Sky business? Were aliens fighting up in the sky? Did God slap an angel in the face or something?

So, what causes white flashes like this in the sky?