Hovering disk object lights up the woods

I can't remember the exact date, but I was about 12 or so (I’m 28 now). Snow was falling and school had been cancelled the next day already. A snowball fight broke out in the front of our house with my brother and his friend. The back of the house backs up to miles and miles of forest. I decided that there may be more snow back there to make a snowball. I went in to the back yard to (which is about 70 yds and slopes downward into the woods) and noticed the trees in the woods background were lighting up in a flashing manner. I thought there may be hunters back there but the flashing light was way too powerful for any spotlight that local raccoon hunters would use. I thought it may be lightning but only a section of the woods was lighting up. The light was like a fluorescent white color and reminded me of a strobe light color. The woods would light up for about 10 seconds and the light (or beam) seemed to be scanning the section of the woods like it was examining the trees and then would turn off for 5 secs. Then this would repeat. It was tough to see what direction that light was coming from so I just continued to walk towards the woods. Finally I saw the object just below the tree line which consisted of mostly tall pines. The tops of the trees were rustling eerily, and there was a misty object that was disk shaped and bright that slowly moved away and zoomed off fast. No sounds whatsoever.
Witness indicates that date of incident is approximate.  PD