Skip to content
Colorado puts its plows on the map

Colorado Snow Plow Tracker and Road Conditions

Colorado shows both things on one map: COtrip carries a Plow Tracker layer with the live position and heading of individual CDOT plows, alongside a winter driving legend that colours highways for snow, ice, wet road, poor visibility and high wind.

Trucks on the map
What the state publishes
Live truck positions
COtrip
The map
CDOT, Colorado Department of Transportation
6
Words on the map
printed without definitions
Yes
Roadside cameras
on the same map, pointed at the road itself
The answer

Where the plows are in Colorado

Trucks on the map

CDOT publishes where its plows are on COtrip.

A reader can see which roads have a truck on them right now. Whether one has already been past is a separate question the layer may or may not answer.

What the state calls it
Plow Tracker
Where it lives
COtrip
How often it updates
COtrip's own map configuration sets the plow layer to reload every 30 seconds.
By phone
511

Open Plow Tracker

CDOT describes it in its own words, from COtrip map configuration, in-map help text for the plow tracker layer, Colorado Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026.

This shows current plow locations for a specific plow truck as well as the direction the plow is traveling.
COtrip map configuration, in-map help text for the plow tracker layer, Colorado Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Advertisement
The map

What COtrip shows

COtrip carries traffic cameras, a phone app called COtrip Planner and a phone line at 511. CDOT describes it this way: "Call 511 for current road and weather information or visit COtrip.org."

Conditions on any state map are reported rather than measured. A plow operator or a trooper enters what they saw, and the map carries it until somebody enters something else, so a colour is a description of the road a while ago on the stretch the person was looking at.

Colorado shows both things on one map: COtrip carries a Plow Tracker layer with the live position and heading of individual CDOT plows, alongside a winter driving legend that colours highways for snow, ice, wet road, poor visibility and high wind.

The map
COtrip
Cameras
Roadside cameras
Phone app
COtrip Planner
Phone line
511

COtrip, Colorado Department of Transportation

Call 511 for current road and weather information or visit COtrip.org.
Winter Driving Resources, Colorado Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
The words

What Colorado calls each state of a road

CDOT runs 6 steps on COtrip, from poor visibility to roadway. CDOT prints the labels without defining them.

These are Colorado’s words and they stop at the state line. There is no national scale: the 33 states that publish a legend use 166 different labels between them, and only 17 publish what their own labels mean. A phrase that means one thing here means something else, or nothing, one state over.

CDOT’s own labels, in the order CDOT lists them. The state prints these labels without defining them.
What the map says
poor visibility
wet road
snow
icy road
high wind
roadway

Read from CDOT’s own legend on September 23, 2026.

When a road shuts

Who closes a road in Colorado

CDOT puts a Passenger Vehicle Traction law in place and then a passenger vehicle chain law, and it describes the chain law as the last step it takes before closing the highway.

This is the final safety measure before the highway is closed.
Winter Driving Resources, Colorado Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

A closure is a different thing from a bad condition, and it is the one entry on the map that carries the force of law behind it. Driving past a closure device is an offence in most states and a rescue bill in several. The map is where the closure is published, and the state also takes reports of conditions from the public.

A red and white striped gate padlocked shut across a two lane forest highway with a ROAD CLOSED sign at its centre, photographed at road level along the wet double yellow line
A seasonal gate shut across a state highway, with no snow on the ground yet. Closures like this one go on by the calendar rather than by the storm, and a driver who checks the map in November finds the road already gone. That is the quietest and most useful thing these maps do, and it happens weeks before anybody looks for a plow. “The gates are closed (49097728041)”, Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0
The good part

Colorado lets the public name its snowplows

6 states run a naming contest, the winning names go on the trucks, and in a state that publishes positions the named trucks then turn up on the map under those names. It is the most reliably delightful thing any transport department does.

Name That Plow

CDOT ran a public naming contest for 20 new plows and publishes the full winning list, which includes Eisenplower and Snowtorious B.I.G. CDOT says the names go on the truck doors and that the named trucks can be followed on cotrip.org.

20 new plows in the CDOT fleet will receive names as part of the inaugural Name That Plow contest.
Winter Driving Resources, Colorado Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

Name That Plow, CDOT

Colorado snow plow tracker questions

A plow truck seen from behind in heavy snowfall casting a wide plume of snow off the left shoulder of an interstate, with one dark treated lane running away to the right
The same event from behind: the truck throwing its wing load onto the shoulder, and beside it the dark strip of lane it has already been down. That contrast between the wet black lane and the white one is the physical thing a road map is reporting when it changes a segment from snow covered to wet, and it is why the colour on the map can be right and the road can still be slick. “Snowplow on Interstate 5 in Everett, Washington”, SounderBruce, CC BY-SA 4.0
Advertisement

Plow trackers in other states

Colorado studded tire datesWhen studs are legal on Colorado roads, and the penalty when they are not.Mountain pass conditionsThe passes that close, and what each state posts when they do.Studded tire laws by stateThe dates studs are legal, state by state.Lake effect snowWhere the bands set up and what they do to a commute.Plow trackers in every stateWhich states show the trucks, which show only the roads, and what their legends say.

Colorado read September 23, 2026 from Winter Driving Resources, Colorado Department of Transportation, linked above. Departments replace these services between seasons and a layer that ran last winter may not run this one, so CDOT’s own page is the one that governs. Conditions shown on it are reported by people and lag the road. Every state is on the snow plow tracker hub.