A snowstorm on Sunday dumped two to five inches of snow around the DC area, summoning some late-night heroes to the streets of Arlington, Virginia.
Snowprah Winfrey, Dwight D. Eisenplower, Saline Dion, Taylor Drift, and Melton John were among 60 Arlington County snow plows and salt trucks that cleared the roads so residents could drive and get back to their business again.
Give 'em plenty of room. From your couch. pic.twitter.com/oiaRyJqXts
— Arlington Department of Environmental Services (@ArlingtonDES) January 19, 2025
But for this article, we’ll focus our attention on The Greatest Freight of them all, Alex Snowvechkin, a snow plow honoring the Washington Capitals’ captain and soon-to-be greatest scorer in NHL history.
The trucks got their punny nicknames from an Arlington County naming contest earlier in the winter, inspired by celebrities, cultural touchstones, and memes. The county even created a snow activity map that would activate when two inches or more of snow fell, showing the real-time progress of the plows and updating the city’s residents of the snow-clearing progress.
The tracker turned on Sunday and stayed on through all of Monday and a part of Tuesday. And yes, a wild Snovi appeared for most of the event.
What I observed was that Snowvechkin primarily cleared residential streets and roads in the southeastern part of the county near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Snovi even took a jaunt down Glebe Road, home of the Capitals’ practice facility.
Snowvechkin cleared roads with A Great Haste, and sometimes, the ever rule-breaker that he was, completely left the roads entirely, appearing to drive through residential homes or fields (I think this might have been some type of tracking error or the side streets weren’t on the map).
The Arlington County snow plow, Alex Snowvechkin, putting in work on Monday after a snow storm blanketed the area with snow.
This screen recording was sped up 300% to better show some of the activity. pic.twitter.com/0VyUpD2hRN
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) January 22, 2025
Arlington County even made live street cameras available to watch so you could see the snow plows go by as they worked. On Tuesday, I managed to grab a screenshot of Snowvechkin at an intersection of Arlington Mill Drive.
I reached out to the county to confirm this was Snowvechkin and was told by a county rep:
This is definitely a brine truck, which were deployed for this most recent winter weather event to treat icy roads.
We can’t confirm if that truck was Alex Snowvechkin; the names are only displayed on the Snow Activity Map for people to follow the snow response, and it runs in almost real-time for overall public safety reasons. The names change based on what vehicles are currently active as well.
So the names are randomly assigned to trucks as they begin plowing the roads and are given to different trucks as they deactivate and rotate through.
Regardless, this was a fun exercise. Alex Snowvechkin (and the person driving him), thank you for your service and for keeping us all safe. The real people behind these steel-y machines: you are the true heroes.
Russian machine never breaks. @rmnb #ArlWX pic.twitter.com/rOFbiQUo7R
— Arlington Department of Environmental Services (@ArlingtonDES) January 6, 2025
