Near where the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers meet, the ballpark lot at Principal Park sits mostly empty all winter — until a snowfall turns it into one more surface that needs clearing before anyone can use it again. Smith Services Group LLC. works that stretch of downtown alongside its residential routes, plowing lots and walkways and running de-icer against the ice that forms fastest where two rivers' worth of cold air settle together. The skyline looks different under a fresh snow, quieter, the downtown grid gone soft-edged until the plows start their first pass and the streets sharpen back up block by block. Driveways across the residential neighborhoods get the same treatment — cleared, walked, treated — on whatever schedule the storm demands, whether that's a pre-dawn pass or a second one after an afternoon flurry adds another inch. It's steady, methodical snow removal built around a city where the rivers shape almost everything, including how the cold arrives.