The fire broke out at a home on Mayfair Avenue.
Damage could be seen to the top of the home and a tree right next to it.
"It did burst into a lot, you know, pretty big flames on top of the roof on the left side of the house," said a neighbor named, who offered her first name, Julia.
Police say no one was inside the home at the time, and no injuries were reported.
A neighbor told Eyewitness News she saw the bolt of lightning.
"We were sitting in our garage, we actually saw the bolt come down, and we heard it -- I mean I jumped up three feet that's how scary it was," said neighbor Diane Hope. "We looked and we saw smoke coming in between the bushes, saw the smoke and our neighbor called 911 and we just headed over, we got here and then they all started coming... the fire department."
Neighbors watching the smoldering house after firefighters got the flames out are wondering why Mother Nature has been beating up on Plainfield and North Plainfield this month.
Two weeks ago a stalled storm caused the flooding that sent storage containers sailing down a street that became a rushing river, and swept a car into a creek killing two people.
Two weeks earlier, in the same area, two people died when a tree and electrical wires came down on a car.
On Friday, thankfully, there was no one in a car in Roselle Park when it was hit by a massive tree that pulled down some wires on Chestnut Street.
Video captured during the storms showed heavy downpours in Livingston, and a water spout on Barnegat Bay.
There will be lots to clean up here in Union this weekend, where firefighters helped get the work started on a tree that just missed a house.
"I heard a noise like, 'boom.' So, I thought maybe a parked car had been hit," said Union homeowner Seth Anane.
It was a Littleleaf Linden tree that Anane says he's been warning the town about.
"Look. Look under the tree. It's all rotten. So, I've been telling them for the past five years to cut it down and they've refused to do that," he said.
The silver lining to this storm is that now the rest of the ailing tree finally has to come down.
Trees that are already sick or compromised have been no match for this summer's intense thunderstorms.
There's never a bad time for property owners to take a good look at vulnerable trees that could be next.
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