The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is having a contest to name our snowplows. They're taking submissions until Jan. 22 at dot.state.mn.us/nameasnowplow, with the winners announced in February. Sounds fun! But you may have a few questions about how this came about. I did. And here's what I discovered:
Q: Why is Minnesota doing this?
A: Because of Twitter, and because it's fun, and the winter days are dark and long. But mostly because of Twitter.
Recently, someone tweeted the news that Scotland gave their snowplows individual names, usually horrible puns. The tweet went viral and soon everyone was suggesting names for plows in their state.
Minnesota media types who have rearranged their optic nerves so one eyeball is always staring at Twitter seized on the idea, and before you could say, "How now brown plow," MnDOT had picked up the idea.
Q: Why do the Scots call their snowplows gritters?
A: Because they strew grit — rock salt, sand, tiny shards of stone. Some of them have plows, but not all. Our plows also deposit grit, but our nomenclature emphasizes the "getting rid of the snow" part. In Scotland it snows 15 to 20 days per year, so perhaps removal is less of an issue than traction.
Q: Why do the Scots name their plows?
