Casey Neistat Snowboarding New York: The 2016 Blizzard Film

On January 23, 2016, New York City was buried under the deepest snowfall in its recorded history, and its roads were closed to traffic. The next day, filmmaker and YouTuber Casey Neistat posted Snowboarding with the NYPD, a few minutes of him riding a snowboard behind a Jeep through empty Manhattan streets. It drew 6.5 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours.

Watch SNOWBOARDING WITH THE NYPD on Casey Neistat’s channel. The film is embedded further down the page.

Winter Storm Jonas and New York’s record snowfall

The storm behind the film is known by several names. The Weather Channel called it Winter Storm Jonas, a name New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio also used; the Washington Post nicknamed it Snowzilla, and many outlets simply called it the Blizzard of 2016. Its heaviest snow fell from January 22 to 24.

• Central Park: 27.5 inches (69.8 cm), the largest single-storm total since records began in 1869.
• JFK Airport: 30.5 inches, an all-time record. LaGuardia recorded 27.9 inches.
• Travel ban: around noon on January 23, Governor Andrew Cuomo banned travel on all roads in New York City and Long Island, and buses and most rail service were suspended.
• Region-wide: about 103 million people lay in the storm’s path, more than 13,000 flights were cancelled, and at least 55 people died. The deepest snow, 42 inches, fell at Glengary, West Virginia.

That empty, snow-packed city is what made the film possible. With almost no cars moving, streets around Times Square looked more like a groomed run than a street grid.

Casey Neistat, the filmmaker behind the ride

Casey Neistat was born in 1981 in Gales Ferry, Connecticut, and built his name in New York with short, fast, personal films. His 2011 video Bike Lanes, which mocked police ticketing of cyclists, was named one of Time’s top creative videos of the year, and his 2012 Nike film Make It Count has passed 32 million views. With his brother Van he made the HBO series The Neistat Brothers in 2010.

He began his daily YouTube vlog on March 26, 2015, and posted vlog number 300 just days before the blizzard. In the same period he co-founded the video app Beme, which CNN bought in 2016. Snowboarding with the NYPD became one of the defining videos of that daily-vlog era.

How the film was made

The setup is simple: a rider in bright red snow gear holds a tow rope behind a Jeep and carves through fresh snow in the middle of Manhattan. The red outfit is a smart choice, because it keeps the rider easy to follow against white streets and grey façades. Wide shots establish the landmarks, while tight, handheld shots carry the speed and spray of snow.

The tongue-in-cheek title is part of the fun, and the timing did the rest: the clip landed on a weekend when most New Yorkers were stuck indoors, scrolling through snow pictures.

Towing a rider on a public road is risky even on a closed, snowy street, with buried kerbs, parked cars and people out walking. Enjoy the film as a one-off storm moment, and take the board to a hill or a city park for the real thing.

New York in the snow

That same weekend produced another famous New York snow story: a Brooklyn snow shelter briefly listed on Airbnb. For skiers who turned a different city into a terrain park, see TGR’s Boston street-skiing project.

Related reading

• Casey Neistat Snowboards Through New York City
• The January 2014 East Coast Snowstorm: Streets, Transport and Winter Scenes
• Buffalo-Area Lake-Effect Snow: Photographs of a Concentrated Storm
• American Cities in Winter: Reading the Snow and Ice Gallery
• The January 2014 US Cold Outbreak: Forecasts, Observations and Winter Impacts
• Vivienne Gucwa’s Snow-Covered New York: A City Seen in Quiet Moments

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