NIPPENOSE TOWNSHIP -- Something is stinking up a community in Lycoming County and it seems our warm January may have something to do with it.
Over the past three weeks, folks in the Jersey Shore area say when the wind blows in a certain direction, they can smell a foul odor.
It may be easy to sniff out a deal at the Farm and Flea Market near Jersey Shore, but shoppers tell us over the past three weeks there's been a funky smell in this community that's no nose can ignore.
"It's enough to gag you," said Don Wilson.
"I thought my propane tank was leaking," said Linda Hale.
"A dead deer smells better than that," added Wison.
"Smells like a rotten pumpkin," said Sue Scanlan.
The odor that smells like rotten eggs or natural gas was pungent enough that several people reached out to Jersey Shore's sewage plant.
Newswatch 16 stopped by the Jersey Shore Sewer Authority. The smell wasn't coming from there.
"If someone could smell our plant five miles (away), then the odor here would be quite overbearing and that's not the case," said executive director Shawn Lorson.
So that stench isn't coming from where most people might think it is. We found the source of it in a field of radishes.
T.A. Seeds, a company just outside of Jersey Shore, has been planting radishes as a crop to cover the fields in the winter for about five years.
"The radishes itself scavenges natural nutrients which are left in the soil," explained company president Taylor Doebler.
Usually, by the time the ground thaws in spring, the crops are mostly decayed. Because it's been so warm, Doebler says acres and acres of crops are decaying faster.
People are smelling rotten plants.
"You know you are going to get more odor if you have this warm weather in January. You are going to smell it a lot quicker."
We were told the smell won't last forever. Once it gets colder, the smell should go away, and it has no negative effects to us or our environment so people don't need to be worried.