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Montana shows the trucks and what their cameras see

Montana Snow Plow Tracker and Road Conditions

Montana drivers get a statewide 511 map that colours every highway segment with one of eleven condition words, a twice daily written road condition report by road and landmark, cameras, and a Snow Plows layer whose markers show where an MDT plow is and a picture taken from it.

Trucks and plow cameras
What the state publishes
Live truck positions and plow cameras
MDT 511 Travel Info Map
The map
MDT, Montana Department of Transportation
11
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 Montana

Trucks and plow cameras

MDT publishes plow positions on MDT 511 Travel Info Map 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
Snow Plows (map overlay on the MDT 511 Travel Info Map)
Where it lives
MDT 511 Travel Info Map
How often it updates
Each plow marker carries the time of its latest image, printed as Updated Today, Updated Yesterday or a date and time in Mountain time. MDT does not publish a refresh interval.
By phone
511 or 1-800-226-7623

Open Snow Plows (map overlay on the MDT 511 Travel Info Map)

The map

What MDT 511 Travel Info Map shows

MDT 511 Travel Info Map carries traffic cameras, a phone app called MT 511 and a phone line at 511 or 1-800-226-7623. MDT describes it this way: "View road conditions, incidents, road work, restrictions, rest areas, cameras, message signs and weather all in one place."

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.

Montana drivers get a statewide 511 map that colours every highway segment with one of eleven condition words, a twice daily written road condition report by road and landmark, cameras, and a Snow Plows layer whose markers show where an MDT plow is and a picture taken from it.

The map
MDT 511 Travel Info Map
Cameras
Roadside cameras
Phone app
MT 511
Phone line
511 or 1-800-226-7623

MDT 511 Travel Info Map, Montana Department of Transportation

View road conditions, incidents, road work, restrictions, rest areas, cameras, message signs and weather all in one place.
Traveler Information, Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
The words

What Montana calls each state of a road

MDT runs 11 steps on MDT 511 Travel Info Map, from Unknown to Road Closed. MDT prints the labels without defining them.

These are Montana’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.

MDT’s own labels, in the order MDT lists them. The state prints these labels without defining them.
What the map says
Unknown
Dry
Wet
Slush
Icy Patches
Icy
Packed Snow Patches
Packed Snow
Snow Covered
Severe Driving Conditions
Road Closed

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

When a road shuts

Who closes a road in Montana

MDT marks a closed highway Road Closed on its own 511 map legend, publishes a separate Seasonally Closed Roads list for gated routes, and prints an Alerts, Closures and Incidents report; the Montana Highway Patrol is the number MDT prints beside its road report for incidents.

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

Montana 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

Plow trackers in other states

Montana studded tire datesWhen studs are legal on Montana 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.

Montana read September 23, 2026 from Traveler Information, Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), linked above. Departments replace these services between seasons and a layer that ran last winter may not run this one, so MDT’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.