Cosmo Park's parking lots sit mostly empty on a January morning, the soccer fields underneath a blank stretch of snow that won't show its lines again until March, and it's the streets ringing that same west side of Columbia where Stanley's Lawn Maintennace LLC runs its plow routes before the day's errands start. West-side subdivisions built in the last couple of decades tend to have wide driveways and long curbs, more pavement per house than the older parts of town, which means more square footage to clear before anyone backs out for work. The crew works those driveways in a set order, learned over enough winters to know which cul-de-sac catches drift first and which stays clear longest under a stand of newer, smaller trees that haven't grown big enough yet to shade anything. Snowplow routes out here follow the shape of the subdivisions themselves, looping cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac rather than running a straight line down an old grid street. By midmorning the loop is finished, every driveway on the route open, long before most of the block has backed out for the day.