Bright flash in the sky

1:15 A.M. August 2, 2016, I was standing in the backyard of my home.  I was looking nearly straight up and facing the northeast watching the stars, looking for satellites and early Perseids Meteors.  I had actually seen two meteors and about 5 satellites.  I had been outside for about an hour, when I got my first really good view of a phenomenon that I have seen on three previous occasions.
I was looking into a clear sky with no obstructions, the same as the three previous times, when I saw what looked like a flash bulb going off in the sky above me.  This is the first time that I have seen this clearly.  On the previous occasions, I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and never got a clear view.  In fact, I have seen it so infrequently that I had figured that it must be a trick of the light.
I starts in a black, starless area of the sky (about 20 degrees east of Alkaid at the end of the big dipper) a small pin prick of light, like a star, suddenly appears and then seems to explode with a flash that leaves a very faint, momentary, aura around it.  The very bright flash expands out to three or four times the diameter of a star and then it fades to black. It’s almost as if a meteor were coming straight down towards the earth and then quickly burns up in the atmosphere while being directly in line with my line of sight.  Not sure if that’s possible but that seems like a pretty good description of it, except that the color isn’t quite right, it has an almost blue-white hue to it and not the more yellow-white of a shooting star.  More of a cool color look. I have seen plenty of satellites that are rotating in and out of reflection and I am 100% sure that it was not a satellite.  It may have a perfectly simple explanation, but I haven’t seen anything on the internet that ! describes exactly what I saw.
I guess it’s not really a UFO, by the strict definition but it is an unusual phenomenon that I can’t explain.  Maybe you folks have an answer for me.