MOUNT POCONO, Pa. -- The month of July is starting out in a heat wave.
With temperatures nearing 100 degrees, people are finding a place to cool off anywhere they can, but exactly four months ago, the month of March started out much differently --- with a blizzard.
The thought of that day still sends chills down the bones of Alyssa Garcet from Tobyhanna.
"I am pretty sure we had to work in Gouldsboro that day and the cars were all over the sides of the highway and in ditches and stuff like that. Cops were trying to pull them out. Yeah, it was pretty bad," said Garcet.
Pretty bad is right! More than two feet of snow was dumped on some parts of the Poconos.
The owner of a gas station near Tannersville says not only did they run out of gas, but his parking lot was filled with stranded cars.
"The people, they don't know where to go. It was terrible, terrible, terrible. Those people were helpless with no place to go," said Naseer Chohan, Chohan's Food Mart.
Exactly four months ago, Newswatch 16's Pocono news team slept in a news car in a parking lot at Mount Airy Casino. It took them about two and a half hours to get there and they were only about two minutes down the road on Route 611. Once they finally got to the casino, they weren't alone. Hundreds of other people stayed there sleeping anywhere they could find, around the pool and in the lobby. So, if you ask them if they prefer the heat wave or the blizzard, they pick the heat wave, and they aren't alone.
"I'd rather the hot weather. At least there are ways to cool off. When you're cold, there are only so many ways to get warm, especially when you lose power," said Nicole Brown, Tobyhanna.
Back in March, power was out for almost a week in a lot of places. Kasa's Pizza on Route 940 near Mount Pocono lost power for a few days. The owner says while it is hot, he prefers this version of Mother Nature.
"Too much crazy going on in March. It's like a night and day kind of thing. It's like spring didn't come, and now summer's here, and it's hotter than it's ever been, maybe. It's kind of strange," said David Buchter, Kasa's Pizza.
And while the heat is crazy, people say they will make the best of it because as they learned from four months ago, the weather can change at any time.