Edmonton residents surprised, delighted at city's punny snow plow names like Fast and Flurrious and The Big Leplowski

Many Edmonton Redditors were surprised to learn that their city has bestowed a set of names to a fleet of its snow plows.

"It’s my first winter living in Edmonton," the original poster wrote on the city’s subreddit. "It made me happy to discover that some of the snow plows have names."

Included with the post is a screenshot of a live snow and ice control map of the city, where snow plows dubbed Fast and Flurrious, Ctrl+Salt+Delete and Scoop! There It Is, are busy at work. The post has been upvoted more than 1,500 times.

“This is my 23rd winter in Edmonton and I also just found this out,” user Advanced-Check61 wrote.

“40th for me,” user fraochmuir added.

'This was a way to inject a little fun' in dreary winter months

Mark Beare, Edmonton’s director of infrastructure operations says the idea to name the vehicles came about in 2022, when the city launched a naming contest.

“We had plans to name five plows but we had over 2,100 nominations,” he tells Yahoo Canada. “It really took hold and captivated the city, so in the end we decided to triple that and named 15 plows.”

A portal was created where people could suggest names, and then upvote them. The city selected the top 30, and then turned them over to the snow and ice crew to vote on the final 15.

Other pun-heavy monikers include The Big Leplowski, Snow-Be-Gone Kenobi, Buzz Iceclear, Qanniq (which means “snowfall” in Inuktituk) and Plowasaurus Rex.

The names are displayed on the side of each vehicle, in a layout similar to a “Hi My Name Is” sticker commonly found at meet-and-greet events.

Beare says the idea was to get Edmontonians involved in the naming process as a way to make winter a little more welcoming.

“Edmonton’s a winter city, it can get pretty dark and cold,” he says. “This was a way to inject a little fun."

The live plow map was rolled out recently, and can track all the plows out on the streets in real time, including the named ones. This year, they’ve doubled the named plows, using the runner-up names from last year and bringing the total of named plows in Edmonton to 28.

Municipalities worldwide get in on the fun of naming snow plows

The snow-plow naming drift first started in Scotland in 2006. At the time, school children were invited by the company responsible for operating the roads to take part in the process of naming “gritters,” as the vehicles are known there.

In Canada, this trend, and including citizens in the process, has been going on since at least 2021, when Calgary launched an initiative to name its fleet of 78 plows. By winter 2022, names like Gritty Gritty Bang Bang, My Fair Bladey and Princess Sleighia were chosen.

Chatham-Kent, a municipality in southwestern Ontario, launched a similar contest in 2021 to name six of its snow plows. The contest proved to be so popular, they expanded it to 13 vehicles, and now they do it every year. The names inaugurated in 2023 were Skip the Ditches, Plow Patrol, Austin Plowers, Taylor Drift, Snowtorius B.I.G. and The Big LePlowski.

Several U.S. states have also engaged their citizens in the name-a-plow process, including Minnesota, Michigan and Vermont, where Scoopy Doo roams the snowy streets.