Viral snow challenge hits York County
The snow challenge is the latest viral sensation to sweep the Internet, and several local athletes joined in the craze on social media as a winter storm delivered more than 25 inches of snow to much of the region.
In case you were wondering what is the snow challenge — or #SnowChallenge — it’s quite simple. A person walks outside in some variation of swimwear, finds an elevated positions and dives into the snow below. Collin Mailman of York Suburban took part in the craze on Sunday by jumping off the roof of his Jeep into the snow.
Mailman learned of the challenge after watching a video of a diver doing it on Twitter, and Mailman received an extra nudge when his mother dared him to do it.
“I figured I'd put my own twist into it by doing a flip,” he said. “We were shoveling and the only thing high enough for me to jump off of was my car. I didn't even know it was a challenge at first, but I just did it in my boxers to be funny. I tweeted that in order for me to do it, my tweet had to get at least 15 retweets. It ended up getting 20.”
To say the least, the Suburban senior was quite cold after his dive.
"I've never sprinted inside so fast before that,” he said.
It wasn’t just Mailman taking the challenge. Members of the York YMCA swimming team also took the plunge. The team's Instagram account posted several videos of swimmers diving, like they would into a pool, head first into the powdery snow.
"I saw some people doing it on Instagram," York YMCA swimmer Nyah Stahl said. "A bunch of my friends and I thought it would be cool to do a swim version. So I decided to do it because I thought it would be fun."