WATCH: Lightning Storm Brightens Sky Over Garden State Parkway

EDISON, NJ — Late Tuesday night the sky over New Jersey filled with lightning bolts, illuminating the light sky and inspiring "wows" from those up late enough to see it. Got to sleep early? Patch captured the weather event on video, above.

The lightning was visible to this Patch reporter between 11:15 p.m. and midnight, down the Turnpike from Weehawken all the way to Edison. The bolts weren't across the sky, but looked isolated to one group of clouds. If you looked east while driving along the Turnpike you'd see just a dark, clear sky, but if you looked west, the sky was full of flashes of lights and bright bolts. This video was taken just after exiting the Turnpike onto the Parkway in Woodbridge.

The video appears to capture two types of lightning bolts: cloud flashes and a "stepped leader." Cloud flashes are when the lightning "occurs inside the cloud, travels from one part of a cloud to another, or from the cloud to the air," the National Severe Storms Laboratory says.

Stepped leader flashes, on the other hand, are "streams of weakly charged particles that flows from the cloud – it moves towards the ground, starting and stopping, and sometimes branching, trying to find the path of least resistance," the NSSL explains.

Although beautiful from afar, the lightning was a sign of a dangerous storm making its way through the state. A severe thunderstorm warning was issued around 11:30 p.m. for several northern and central New Jersey counties, Morris County, Hunterdon, Warren, and Somerset counties. The National Weather Service warning instructed residents to stay inside on the lower level of their homes, saying wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour could topple trees and cause damage.

Image and video taken by Katie Kausch for Patch