The night sky over New York City always lights up as the 4th of July approaches, but Wednesday night, it was Mother Nature providing the fireworks. A severe thunderstorm hit the New York area, bringing with it torrential downpours, intense lightning, and scores of camera-ready urbanites in all five boroughs to capture it all on video.

This shooter in Long Island City, Queens, caught a lightning strike close to home:

A man driving through Brooklyn made a dashboard cam lightning montage:

A Staten Islander captured 12 minutes of the storm (but the best lightning discharge is at around 7:20):

In the Bronx, actor and Howard Stern semi-regular Joey Boots caught this from his roof:

And in Manhattan, several people covered the Freedom Tower getting struck:

The people who shot this one, however, said what was on every New Yorker's mind Wednesday night: