Michigan DOT Snowplow Names
michigan.gov
michigan.gov
This is valuable during the winter to see the road conditions outside of areas like metro Detroit or Grand Rapids (which have fixed road cameras).
https://mdotjboss.state.mi.us/MiDrive/map?plows=true
EDIT: I mostly drive between Grand Rapids and Lansing, and I haven't looked in a while, but there are actually a lot of fixed cameras on major highways now, even outside metro areas:
The plow cameras and sensors (plow position, salt/aggregate activity, etc) are more useful for transportation operations staff to know what's been plowed and what still needs plowing but technically do take pictures of the whole highway instead of just the rwis stations.
Site went live back in 2005 with the current look appearing around about 2009 (memory is getting fuzzy).
Baseline network activity on a typical day ran about 4 MByte/sec continuous; on "snow days"[2] the load increases an order of magnitude to 24 MByte/second. That was 5+ years ago - I expect there's been growth since then.
[0] https://drivebc.ca/#mapView&z=11&ll=49.485664%2C-120.367187
[1] https://images.drivebc.ca/bchighwaycam/pub/html/dbc/452.html
[2] "Snow day" might be "the Coquihalla is getting about 50cm over the next 12 hours"
I actually used one recently. My wife was caught in a traffic jam due to an accident/car fire. I was able to actually find a visual of her car on the highway from my laptop. She had our baby in the car who was screaming and I was able to narrate what was happening with the accident - which gave her enough time to change a diaper while stopped and then get safely back in the driver seat before traffic started moving.
This is really helpful for understanding conditions in the lesser traveled parts of the state.
"we'll just downgrade it from 4k to 1080p and we'll only give them access to half of them"
My city has two persons in the cab, one is the driver, one is the spotter. The spotter really just calls audibles on the stuff they see.
It's cheaper to hire that spotter than pay the insurance for single operator scenarios.
We can get some heavy snow days, the kind that make everything come to a standstill until things are cleared by these hulking beasts (kudos for naming one plow "hulk"). Having access to this information would be awesome.
Not surprising the home of the motor city would (appear) have their road clearing under control.
They're out there before the snow falls, during the snowfall and until the snow is off the road operating essentially a multi-ton switchblade in darkness where everything is hidden beneath an opaque blanket of frozen water. And your vehicle (before the blade is attached) is as wide as the lane.
The visibility conditions are bad, the road surface is bad (that's why you're out there!) And your boss is remotely monitoring your every movement, questioning every work stoppage as if stopping for a coffee, or to take a dump is going to bankrupt the economy. Even operating 'just' the sidewalk plows seems super stressful.
I have had close friends who were the spotters for 40-year veteran operators, it seems like a huge rush that (despite all these challenges) could be kind of fun.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-snowplo...
Clearopathra is inspired, though.
David Plowie
Nicole Saltslinger
Spreaddie Mercury
Thaw Enforcement
Gritney Spears
(I'm not sure if it's just a Minnesota thing, but I never heard it in any of the other upper midwest states in which I lived.)
(I'm Ohioan, and can confirm never having heard of this... questionable variant)
https://www.christopherpollard.com/2013/02/22/in-minnesota-i...
[1]: https://metro.co.uk/2017/11/19/new-council-gritter-named-gri...
There's a lot more, but I'm at work and people are walking in now.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mcface_spoofs
https://www.audacy.com/wwjnewsradio/news/local/mdot-names-al...
This made me curious: who did come up with these names? Was it top down from the DOT? Or did they let the crews name their plows?
> The story of these hilarious gritter names goes back to 2006 when Transport for Scotland decided to run a competition in Scottish primary schools. Pupils were tasked with inventing the best possible names for a fleet of gritters.
(Gritter = salt/grit spreader, more common than an actual plough in Britain, although Scotland presumably needs some of each.)
I don't know if Scotland was first with the idea. Big vehicles have been named for centuries, officially and unofficially. (Ships, trains, planes etc.)
Observers of contemporary culture coined the term "McBoatfacing", defined as "making the critical mistake of letting the internet decide things". In one such observation, Jennifer Finney Boylan of The New York Times wrote that to be "McBoatfaced" was to allow people to "deliberately make their choices not in order to foster the greatest societal good, but, instead, to mess with you". The results of the poll inspired numerous similar spoofs in other naming polls.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mcface_spoofs
People just preferred the silly name
"Now, All We Need Is A Little Salt And A Lot Of Luck!"
"There's A Thin Line Between Roads Being A Closed, And Roads Being Open."
"One Day, An Plow Truck Will Rise From Our Ranks And Use The Power Of Salt To Clear Our Worst Roads. Until That Day, Til' All Are One."
"Snow Shall Stand, Salt Shall Fall!"
EDIT: H/T to capableweb for a working Ctrl+F
Hahaha. Some of these are great!
...and Snowbegone Kenobi lol
https://www.google.com/search?q=ww2+nose+art&source=lnms&tbm...
My dad's was "Round Trip Ticket III"
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Road?
"Sir Aaron Brr" prolly likes to splash the snow back into traffic.
* Snowpiercer * Plowly McPlowFace