A father, with his two children each carrying a sled, stopped to wave from the sidewalk. A boy with a snowball in hand ran across his yard to see it go by. As chunks of snow flew off the road, a bundled-up pair of walkers whooped in appreciation.
With an occasional honk for well-wishers, Dolly Plowton — a snazzy new snowplow adorned with purple and pink snowflakes — was making its Nashville debut.
“I get a lot of waves, a lot of hurrahs,” said Greg Bergstresser, 23, who spent much of his 12-hour shift on Saturday behind the wheel of the snowplow, driving through West Nashville.
When it comes to how well the South deals with snow and ice, the question is not necessarily one of individual fortitude. The region is accustomed to meteorological and natural calamity: hurricanes, tornadoes, sweltering humidity, even invasive flora and fauna.
When the South struggles with low temperatures and snow-slickened roads, it is often more of a matter of infrastructure and inexperience. Southerners resort to staying home during winter storms in part because they know that, in a region that does not see snow and ice very often, even a couple of inches can snarl roads and ravage the power grid.
The addition of Dolly Plowton and four other new snowplows in Nashville illustrates how some Southern cities have been trying to shore up their little-used winter infrastructure. It also reflects the migration of many people to the region from colder parts of the country, who bring assumptions about how a city should respond to snow.
“It is a different mentality, and, as we’ve had different people move in here from outside of this area, the expectation has been different” from that of lifelong residents, said Philip Jones, the deputy director of Nashville’s transportation department.
And this weekend’s snowstorm, he added, “has been the talk of the town.”
Mr. Jones and others on his staff concede that, while they loved snow days as children, they are more serious now as adults working 12-hour weekend shifts to deal with the storm. The main concern in the city was not so much the accumulating snow as the possible buildup of ice through days of below-freezing temperatures; ice is a far more potent threat to power lines, roads and other city infrastructure.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation reported responding to dozens of traffic incidents on Saturday as snow began to fall across the state. But many motorists heeded warnings to stay off the roads: In parts of Nashville, the snowplows encountered a fraction of the usual traffic as they pushed slowly up and down the streets, passing an occasional jogger, dog walker or sledding child.
It has not been cheap to build up the city’s fleet, which now numbers 45 plows. The five new trucks cost about $350,000 apiece. The city spent another $200,000 on a driver training simulator, which is essentially an arcade console surrounded by screens that can be programmed to simulate ice, road or pedestrian conditions.
The new plows are bigger than the city’s older ones, which has taken some getting used to. This is the first full year that the plows are equipped with iPads that display routes digitally, rather than drivers having to depend on paper maps and their memories.
There are about 603 additional miles of roads to be cleared by city plows this winter, compared with in past years.
“We got the equipment, we got the guys — get to it, let’s get to it,” said William Shelton, 37, who usually cuts trees for the city, but who spent part of Friday using a snowplow to spray streets with brine.
“I’ll keep driving ol’ Dolly,” he added, though the machine had just 1,200 miles on the odometer so far.
Along with Dolly Plowton, four other new snowplows in the newly expanded fleet were given names and paint job designs by public school students in Nashville: Music City Plow, Blizzard of Oz, Snowella and Frosty the Snow Plow. (Never mind that some students were hoping the new plows wouldn’t entirely clear away the snow-day magic.)
At Cane Ridge High School in Antioch, the class discussion about plow names began with a simple question: What is a snowplow?
“We don’t have snow, like, all the time, where you would have a huge fleet of trucks,” said Larissa Ottinger, who teaches the class that came up with the Dolly Plowton moniker.
Her students, she said, “wouldn’t have necessarily seen” one of the vehicles.
When it came to naming the plows, it was an easy decision to draw inspiration from one of Tennessee’s most beloved icons, according to Courtney Hester, 16, who said she happened to be wearing a Dolly Parton shirt that day.
Ms. Ottinger said on Friday that her class was eagerly anticipating seeing their plow and its signature purple and pink snowflakes.
“I’ll definitely be out looking,” said Jordan Rizzo, 16.
While the city hopes the new plows will help keep winter mayhem to a minimum this weekend, the message to its residents remains the same: Please stay home.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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