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Minnesota shows the trucks and what their cameras see

Minnesota Snow Plow Tracker and Road Conditions

A driver in Minnesota gets the statewide 511mn map with traffic cameras, a seven step winter driving legend that runs from Normal to Road Closed, and photos taken from cameras mounted on the plows themselves.

Trucks and plow cameras
What the state publishes
Live truck positions and plow cameras
511mn
The map
MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation
7
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 Minnesota

Trucks and plow cameras

MnDOT publishes plow positions on 511mn together with photographs taken from cameras mounted on the trucks.

A reader can see a truck move and then look at what its driver is looking at, which is the closest thing any state publishes to standing at the roadside.

What the state calls it
Plow Cameras
Where it lives
511mn
By phone
511

Open Plow Cameras

MnDOT describes it in its own words, from Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026.

Plow Cameras show current and historical photos taken by cameras mounted on snow plows.
Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
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The map

What 511mn shows

511mn carries traffic cameras, a phone app called Minnesota 511 and a phone line at 511. MnDOT describes it this way: "Real-time statewide map of crashes, closures, construction, winter road conditions, traffic cameras, plow locations, weather alerts, trucker restrictions, and more. Sign up to schedule SMS/email alerts for your frequent routes and areas."

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.

A driver in Minnesota gets the statewide 511mn map with traffic cameras, a seven step winter driving legend that runs from Normal to Road Closed, and photos taken from cameras mounted on the plows themselves.

The map
511mn
Cameras
Roadside cameras
Phone app
Minnesota 511
Phone line
511

511mn, Minnesota Department of Transportation

Real-time statewide map of crashes, closures, construction, winter road conditions, traffic cameras, plow locations, weather alerts, trucker restrictions, and more. Sign up to schedule SMS/email alerts for your frequent routes and areas.
Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
The words

What Minnesota calls each state of a road

MnDOT runs 7 steps on 511mn, from Visibility ≤ 1/2 mil to Road Closed. MnDOT prints the labels without defining them.

These are Minnesota’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.

MnDOT’s own labels, in the order MnDOT lists them. The state prints these labels without defining them.
What the map says
Visibility ≤ 1/2 mil
Visibility ≤ 1/10 mile
Normal
Partially Covered
Completely Covered
Travel Not Advised
Road Closed

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

When a road shuts

Who closes a road in Minnesota

MnDOT staff decide to close a state highway, with input from local law enforcement and the Department of Public Safety, and the closed road is marked on 511mn as Road Closed.

The decision to close a highway is made by MnDOT staff, with input from local law enforcement and the Department of Public Safety.
Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota 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.

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

Minnesota 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 a Snowplow contest

MnDOT runs the contest by season and publishes the eight winning names, one per district, plus the full finalist list and the winners from previous seasons. The 2025-26 winners include Oh, For Sleet's Sake in District 3 and The Life of a Snowgirl in the Metro District.

The winners are in! Thank you to the more than 18,800 people who voted on our list of finalists.
Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

Name a Snowplow contest, MnDOT

Minnesota 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
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Plow trackers in other states

Minnesota studded tire datesWhen studs are legal on Minnesota 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.

Minnesota read September 23, 2026 from Minnesota 511 Travel Information | MnDOT, Minnesota Department of Transportation, linked above. Departments replace these services between seasons and a layer that ran last winter may not run this one, so MnDOT’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.