Snow Thunder... Only in Colorado

I drove through the most bizarre weather this past Friday night. It was probably one of the strangest experiences of my life, making me feel like I was driving through some other world... Here's the story:
On my way to take a friend home (about a 20 minute drive) I was driving through a light drizzley slush... a few minutes later it turned into a light hailstorm, which is odd for February, but understandable because it had been a warm day. It started getting harder and harder and all of a sudden turned into a full-on blinding blizzard, complete white-out. Then the craziest thing happened, a flash of blinding light, followed by a loud boom. This was repeated several times in the next few minutes... yes! I was in a blizzard with a lightning storm. Near my friends house the blizzard slowed down and turned into a fog, and then all of a sudden, as if driving through a time-warp or something, the fog broke and I could see a beautiful starry sky. Looking behind me it looked like a massive electric ball of white rolling over the city. I drove back through it to get home, and the clouds were so dense it looked as bright as noon outside because of the light reflecting off the clouds and the electrical storm flashing over the city.
It was a crazy experience, and apparently, according to meteorologist Mike Nelson, rather rare. Like I said... only in Colorado!