Every winter, snowplows are essential to Minnesota culture and environment. They often see such high levels of snow that the streets are completely clogged with the fallen wintery wonderland marker. Because snowplows are such a commonplace winter sight for Minnesotans, they have started a tradition of naming the state snowplows different fun and silly, often pun heavy names. They hold a vote for the official names and voting has officially commenced for this year’s plows.

Some past names have been Plowy McPlowFace and Darth Blader.

The tradition of naming the state snowplows began in 2020. They often run up to 800 plows, so the names usually are used to reference several plows. They already have in place some names, but early next week will announce the names of about eight more plows. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has 49 finalists that are up for the vote. Some of the leading names are Beyonsleigh, Taylor Drift, and Aaron Brrrr, Sir. All of these are after cultural phenomena from the past few years, obviously being Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Aaron Burr from the Broadway smash hit musical Hamilton.

People who live outside of Minnesota are actually encouraged to vote.

Anne Meyer, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said that they were aware of Scotland having a long standing practice of naming snowplows before deciding to do this themselves too. In their first year of 2020, they received over 24,000 name submissions and had about 122,000 cast votes. Since then, their numbers have declined but still remain quite high. This year, they had over 8,000 name submissions sent in to be a part of the vote.

Some other past names have been Blizzard of Oz, Scoop Dogg, and Han Snolo. also, names are also great puns that connect to snow and Minnesota history, like F. Salt Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald is the famed author of The Great Gatsby, was originally from St. Paul. Another such name that fits this double meaning bill is The Truck Formerly Known as Plow, which references Prince who used to be known by a similarly worded title, who was originally from Minneapolis.

Because of the success of this snowplow naming contest, other states are starting their own similar tradition!