Gritty McVittie

January 16, 2018 10:08 PM

It has been snowing heavily in Scotland. All the snow ploughs and gritters are out doing their part. You can track their position and progress live - where you will also notice that each vehicle has a name. Bonus for finding David Ploughie.
posted by rongorongo (54 comments total)

Some of the gritters are named! I spotted Gritty Gritty Bang Bang and Gritallica near Dundee.
posted by Harald74 at 10:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

Is there a ploughie mcploughface?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:14 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

Do the whimsically named gritters have their names painted on them?
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:14 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sir Salter Scott. Heh.

There needs to be a Veruca Salter.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:53 PM on January 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

There's also Sir Grits a Lot, lol.

Turns out you can search for gritters by name—or just proceed through the alphabet since it searches in realtime—which does take a little of the challenge out, but is more comprehensive. I also hope they name them all.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:00 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

We appear to have missed Sir Andy Flurry. - apparently it was indeed primary school children who got to pick the names.
posted by rongorongo at 11:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

Gritallica!
posted by rtha at 11:15 PM on January 16, 2018

In February, 1978, one-off Stiff-released Scots punk band The Subs dug Bernard and Marian Foulstone out of their blizzard-buried car. In 2017, US poet John Burgess wrote about it.
posted by mwhybark at 11:18 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

Bonus for finding David Ploughie.

All together, now:

I'm Mr Ploughie,
That's my name,
That name again,
Is Mr Ploughie.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:11 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

Did they FINALLY name one the Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney?

They did! But it was in Doncaster, where they also have David Plowie. Why do I know so much about gritter names?
posted by elsietheeel at 12:21 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]

Hmm, there's two snowballs: FM13DFE & VX64JWD

Looks like a fight!
posted by flamewise at 1:25 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sir Salter Scott is actually my nearest named gritter, there is one currently near Inverness airport called Sprinkles, which is rather sweet.
posted by epo at 1:31 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Brilliantly they have one Mr Plough and two Snowballs.

Apparently Snowball II is replaced by Snowball III etc in later Simpsons episodes. Way to shit on your own show's joke guys.

They should get these primary school kids writing on the Simpsons. They're really funny.
posted by howfar at 1:54 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

Our nearest named one is Fred, but it looks like Grittie McVittie is on the way.

Also nice to see a more cheerful snow news story than "SNOW MISERY: SCOTS SHIVER IN DESPAIR IN HOMES/OFFICES/THE M74". I had a beautiful snowy walk to the station this morning, followed by a miserable trudge through pools of grimy melting slush in the city at the other end, and I'll take the snow over that any day.
posted by Catseye at 2:10 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I have nothing to add to the discussion other than - this made my morning, thanks!
posted by Molesome at 2:13 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

The winners of the #DoncasterGrittingWorldCup were indeed 'Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney' and 'David Plowie'.

Gritsy and David join their fellow Doncaster gritters: Brad Grit, Gritney Spears, The Subzero Hero, Mr Plow and Usain Salt

They also beat out Spready Mercury and Basil Salty for the win.
posted by myotahapea at 2:19 AM on January 17, 2018 [15 favorites]

I have nothing to add to the discussion other than - this made my morning, thanks!

I think the reaction of you and others won't have escaped the notice of the Scottish government. In Scotland we like to pretend we are blasé about snow - not phased by a few flurries like people down south. But the last snowpocalypse in 2010 cost the transport minister his job - the media and wider population were obsessed with stories about gridlocked roads and stuck passengers. This time we still have that - but everybody is talking about Ready-Spready-Go.
posted by rongorongo at 2:31 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

Hunh. After reading the stuck motorist stories, I was surprised at the actual amount of snow that seems to be causing the issues -- 10-25cm (6-10in) in the hills, and 2-8cm (1-4in) elsewhere? I guess I was under the impression that it snowed a couple times a winter in Scotland, but you seem to be having a level of freak out I'd associate with a Southern US city where they don't have any snow removal equipment on hand and nobody knows how to drive in the snow. Boston's getting about that amount today, there's a bunch of school closures but so far they haven't even put the emergency parking rules into effect.
posted by Diablevert at 2:55 AM on January 17, 2018

where they don't have any snow removal equipment on hand and nobody knows how to drive in the snow.

It pretty much is that. We do get snow a few times a year, but it's usually light and infrequent enough that there's not really the infrastructure or equipment in place to cope with anything more than a light snowfall that melts after a few hours, and people aren't used to driving in it.
posted by Catseye at 3:07 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

(Kind of) related: David Sedaris has a garbage truck named after him.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:15 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm hoping I don't slip on the horrible slushy-ice crud which is now the pavement outside our Edinburgh flat, on our way in to the taxi to the station to take us back down south, in about an hour from now.

It was extremely picturesque looking out of the windows last night though, when the snow was all crisp and fresh and much safer to walk on I'm sure.

Very glad to not be needing to drive anywhere myself in these conditions!
posted by BuxtonTheRed at 3:34 AM on January 17, 2018

We've got about 8 inches right now stateside and watching all the ploughs and salters on the tracker drive all around the perimeters of my neighborhood while carefully never actually entering it would be more amusing of the vehicles had names. I shoveled my street last night :-/

Guaranteed all ours would be named after our hockey team players, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:42 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

After reading the stuck motorist stories, I was surprised at the actual amount of snow that seems to be causing the issues -- 10-25cm (6-10in) in the hills, and 2-8cm (1-4in) elsewhere?
I have a cartoon for you, Diablevert

Part of the problem is that we don't get enough snow to have a Scandinavian culture of just switching to snow tyres and driving on top of it. Instead we have to plough and grit the roads and have an infrastructure that is primed to clear many miles of route in as little time as possible given the type of blizzard that does not even hit once a year on average. The app mentioned here, is an off-shoot from the Exactrak routing algorithm that is used by the vehicles as a way of trying to solve this problem.
posted by rongorongo at 3:50 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

Last time it snowed this heavily in Edinburgh was 2011, which was a small catastrophe — it had been so long since the last ultra-snowy winter that the council had stopped bothering to maintain gritters and snow ploughs, so the city ground to a halt for a week due to about 20-40cm of snow.

(Looking out of my window I'm not keen on venturing outside today: the road I live on is clear, but the pavements are snowy and it's packing down to ice, and it's steep enough that falls are likely. Time to figure out where I stashed the Yak Trax I bought after the last snowpocalypse ...)
posted by cstross at 3:56 AM on January 17, 2018

apparently it was indeed primary school children who got to pick the names.

In other news: Scottish primary school children are above average at naming things.
posted by acb at 4:21 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

Tha Mister Plough na chall
Agus chuala mi gu bheil e deoch
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Part of the problem is that we don't get enough snow to have a Scandinavian culture of just switching to snow tyres and driving on top of it.

Hah. I was in Stockholm one autumn when an inch of snow fell a little earlier than expected, and the whole place put on as fine a display of civic chaos as any British city. Don't buy that Nordic hype.

And it has been delightful to wake up this morning to find Schloss Devonia lit from outside by reflected snowlight. Very space station. Working from home smugness, ahoy.
posted by Devonian at 5:14 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

If any additional names are required, I would respectfully suggest The Blizzard King - and perhaps Flake News.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:17 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Luke Snowalker anyone?
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:29 AM on January 17, 2018

And Gritalicia! that is totally metal!
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:30 AM on January 17, 2018

Devonian, I am in the northern USA, in an area where it snows a lot. This time of year, mid-January, it's been going on for weeks already and everyone is pretty calm about it. But for the first snow every fall, we have all the civic chaos too, the ditches fill with cars and the tow trucks are busy. It's just how humans are, they go nuts over novel weather and do stupid things. Some places, every snowfall is novel. Here, it loses its novelty quickly, but it's still novel at the start of the season.

Then we point and laugh at places that have this particular freakout on a less-than-annual basis.
posted by elizilla at 6:02 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Great names and I wish we did this in NJ. We could name private garbage trucks after Mafia Dons here too. Truth in advertising.
posted by mermayd at 6:10 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]

Bonus for finding David Ploughie.

Wait. How do you all pronounce "plough"? Do you think Avril Lavigne pronounced Bowie's name correctly?
posted by leotrotsky at 6:12 AM on January 17, 2018

> "Wait. How do you all pronounce 'plough'?"

Pluff.
posted by kyrademon at 6:34 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]

soren_lorensen: "We've got about 8 inches right now stateside and watching all the ploughs and salters on the tracker drive all around the perimeters of my neighborhood while carefully never actually entering it would be more amusing of the vehicles had names. I shoveled my street last night :-/"

I saw an actual snow plow going down my street this morning. It even had the blades down so it was really moving snow around. Sadly I didn't get a picture of it so no one will believe me.
posted by octothorpe at 7:07 AM on January 17, 2018

Wait. How do you all pronounce "plough"?

Rhymes with “blow.” As in, “plough chops.”
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:19 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

> "Wait. How do you all pronounce 'plough'?"

To rhyme with Cholomondley-Featherstonehaugh.
posted by cstross at 7:24 AM on January 17, 2018 [24 favorites]

Wait. How do you all pronounce "plough"?

Rhymes with “blow.” As in, “plough chops.”

It's an ancient reference, sir, but it checks out.
posted by Ufez Jones at 7:31 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]

But for the first snow every fall, we have all the civic chaos too, the ditches fill with cars and the tow trucks are busy. It's just how humans are

Just noting that this is true in greater Buffalo too, where the average annual snowfall is 100 inches / 250 cm.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Plow vs plough
posted by briank at 7:51 AM on January 17, 2018

Regarding the comment upthread about Scots feeling superior about our blase attitude to snow - it took me 2 hours to get home on the bus in Edinburgh last night when it should take 30 minutes. I was therefore running late for parental duties and my weekly basketball practice.

I left the house half an hour late, scraped the car clean in shorts, drove to the end of my street to be confronted by two jack-knifed cars which I narrowly avoided joining, considered giving up and leaving the car there and eventually turned the car round gingerly and went home.

There's a difference between being blase and being prepared... We are not prepared for even a dusting of snow and it annoys me.
posted by trif at 8:14 AM on January 17, 2018

Here are some plow trackers in the US and Canada, but it looks like the Scots get the win for having fun with naming (or at least sharing the names).

* Michigan DOT's plows often share their view of the roads (toggle " Snowplows" on), but don't share their names
* Vermont plow trucks are labeled with 7 digit numbers
* Pennsylvania has plows on 511pa.com, but there's no naming provided
* Ontario has Track My Plow, but like PA and MI, no individual labels are provided
* Chicago has Clearstreets.org, but the site tells me that their plows are currently "hibernating"
* the City of Rochester also has a plow tracker that is inactive at the moment
posted by filthy light thief at 8:18 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Columbus, Ohio also has trackers, but no names for the trucks, and it doesn't show all of them (only the ones that school children have painted).

(Note the complete lack of plowing on "Priority 3" streets. The snow happened on Friday. People are...pissed, to put it mildly.)
posted by damayanti at 8:34 AM on January 17, 2018

you seem to be having a level of freak out I'd associate with a Southern US city

Currently, in North Carolina
posted by thivaia at 8:41 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

I saw an actual snow plow going down my street this morning. It even had the blades down so it was really moving snow around.

It's a post-Christmas miracle! I actually think they did not a bad job on Saturday. By about 2:00 PM most major roads were perfectly fine and my road got ploughed (yes I spell it like that and also dialogue and pyjama, so there!) not once but twice! (Well, okay, 3/4 of my block. They tend to go down the street, hang a left, come back up the alley, and then turn right, which results in a C-shape that utterly neglects the little block that contains only my driveway and the driveway of my across-the-street neighbors.) But yesterday was a clusterfuck.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:07 AM on January 17, 2018

We were in the low -20s last week, and was icy. We've had nearly 60 cm so far this year, which is pretty normal for the Ottawa area.

And last week we still had a school bus in the city ditch on my (rural) road. Snow days are slow and iffy here too. The big boss sent everyone home at noon for winter storms last week.

Incidentally, Perth, our Perth, today is a balmy -7C or so and in "wintermission"
between Arctic Clippers. Time to move the wood in from the shed, to restock the garage.
posted by bonehead at 9:24 AM on January 17, 2018

Is there really no Piers the Ploughman?
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

Hunh. After reading the stuck motorist stories, I was surprised at the actual amount of snow that seems to be causing the issues -- 10-25cm (6-10in) in the hills, and 2-8cm (1-4in) elsewhere?

In places with a continental climate typically it'll snow and then stay below freezing for quite some time, and snow repeatedly and you get a nice layer built up that's fine to walk and drive on as long as you take your time. In places with an oceanic climate where it snows rarely, typically when it does it's just below freezing and you'll generally have repeated freeze-thaw cycles on the nights and days after (and also all surfaces are wet from rain throughout winter and there are often standing puddles everywhere from before the snow that freeze), so you get dangerous ice everywhere.

Also on top of that obviously it's a hard sell to spend money on infrastructure you might only use once every five years at most.
posted by kersplunk at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

There is NO excuse for ALL of them not having names. Get on it, Scotland.
posted by The otter lady at 10:21 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

It’s not Scottish, but “Speed, the Plow” would be a good name.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2018

So my dentist is 85 miles away from here. The morning I had two root canals and two extractions we had about 3 inches of snow overnight. The drive there was fine for the first 70 miles. They salted and gritted the highway and plowed where they needed to, we have studded snow tires and 4WD, and once the sun came up conditions improved even more.

But that didn't matter once we got into town...where it took two and a half hours to go fifteen miles. And most of that two and a half hours was taken up by standstill conditions for 10 miles on the highway. There wasn't even snow left on the highway. Or ice. Or anything. It was just people being ridiculous and driving like the Rapture had come. The same nonsense happens any time it rains in the Bay Area or Sacramento. Weather doesn't make bad traffic, people do.

(Bonus: I have another dentist appointment on Monday morning -- guess what the weather service is forecasting? Luckily my dentist is in Reno and I should be able to get a pretty cheap hotel room in a casino on a Sunday night. Sadly I don't drink, smoke, or gamble.)
posted by elsietheeel at 12:22 PM on January 17, 2018

This just brought me so much joy, and I wish my state did this.
posted by TwoStride at 6:03 PM on January 17, 2018

This Twitter conversation involving Doncaster city council is A+

https://twitter.com/ahall41116/status/953253599139782658

Ashley Hall: @MyDoncaster looks like you’re lagging behind on the whole naming of snowplough thing

Doncaster Council: The live map is very cool, we'll admit. How have they done it? Is it witchcraft?

Harry Moore: yeah think the witches did it

Doncaster Council: More like the GRITCHES amiright
posted by simonw at 1:04 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

And now Doncaster CC strike back with their own map!
posted by howfar at 7:21 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]