Snow and Lightening - My vision went OUT
A couple days ago there was a very short snow storm where I live (Denver), and for the first time in my life I experienced a snow storm with lightening. I was walking a friend home and it was just barely coming down. My friend lives about 30 minutes away from me, and halfway to his house the snow started coming down pretty hard. It was pretty beautiful for a while, because the snow was coming down so hard the air looked white, but then all the sudden WAM! - my vision went completely out for a split second, replaced with a blinding white light, and I mean completely out. I couldn't see for a split second. About 10 seconds later I heard some pretty mild thunder, and realized that the bright flash was from lightening! My friend missed the flash because the second it happened he was saving himself from a nasty fall on ice. At first I thought it must of hit extremely close to us because it was SOOO bright, but realized that didn't make sense because from the sound and timing of the thunder, it must of hit quite a ways a way, but at the time it scared the living shit out of me. A group of people who were walking behind us started running around and screaming right after the lightening struck, and that worried me even more. We contenued walking and about 5 minutes later another blinding flash of light enveloped my vision, and this time my friend saw it to. We both got pretty freaked out (my friend didn't believe me when I told him about the first flash, and laughed at how paranoid I got:P). Same as the last lightening, the thunder hit about 5-10 seconds later and was not loud at all, but the intensity of the lightening convinced me that we had to get to shelter, and fast. My friends house was only two blocks away, so we hurried as fast as we could to get there. The moment we got to the stairs leading up to his front porch, another bolt hit. This time the flash was not blinding (although it was still VERY bright), and from where I saw the flash it looked like the lightening hit about 10-20ft behind us, and this time the thunder came a second or two later, and it was fucking LOUD! It literally shook the house and the air. We both ran into the house and I stayed there until the sky cleared, which only took about 20 minutes.
Now I don't think we came as close to death as I felt we did at the time. The best explanation I can come up with to explain the blinding flashes of light is that the light from the lightening had reflected off of all the snow on the ground and in the air, which intensified it so much that it was blinding.
What does everyone else think about this? Was I almost hit or was the snow responsible for the strange behavior of the lightening?
