Texas Snow Plow Tracker and Road Conditions

Q: Why is there no plow tracker in Texas?

TxDOT has not published one. 31 of the 50 states are in the same position, and several of them get more snow than the states that do publish one. What Texas publishes instead is DriveTexas, the state's own travel map, at https://drivetexas.org/.

Q: What is DriveTexas?

DriveTexas is Texas Department of Transportation's own travel information service. DriveTexas carries traffic cameras, a phone app called DriveTexas and a phone line at 1-800-452-9292. TxDOT describes it this way: "Information on road conditions in the state is available at DriveTexas™ or by phone at 800-452-9292."

Q: How do I report a road problem in Texas?

TxDOT takes reports at https://www.txdot.gov/about/contact-us/report-an-issue.html. The travel information line is 1-800-452-9292.

Roads, not trucks

What the state publishes

No live plow map

DriveTexas

The map

TxDOT, Texas Department of Transportation

7

Words on the map

each one defined by the state

Yes

Roadside cameras

on the same map, pointed at the road itself

The answer

Where the plows are in Texas

Roads, not trucks

TxDOT publishes road conditions on DriveTexas and does not publish the position of its plow trucks.

A reader gets the road as an operator described it, which is a real answer and a different one. Nothing on the map says whether a truck is on the way.

Where it lives: DriveTexas
By phone: 1-800-452-9292

Open DriveTexas

Texas is one of 31 states in that position, and it is a larger group than most readers expect. Publishing a live fleet means publishing where every truck is at every moment, which is a decision about data and about what a department is willing to be measured on rather than a decision about how much snow a state gets.

What TxDOT does publish is the road, which for the question most people are actually asking is often the better answer. A reader who wants to know whether to drive wants the surface, not the truck. Texas also carries roadside cameras on the same map, and a camera pointed at the road two miles ahead settles the question faster than any colour does.

The map

What DriveTexas shows

DriveTexas carries traffic cameras, a phone app called DriveTexas and a phone line at 1-800-452-9292. TxDOT describes it this way: "Information on road conditions in the state is available at DriveTexas™ or by phone at 800-452-9292."

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.

Texas puts its highway conditions on one map, DriveTexas, which colours reported conditions including Ice/Snow and Closures and carries live traffic cameras, but TxDOT publishes no map of where its snowplows are.

The map: DriveTexas
Cameras: Roadside cameras
Phone app: DriveTexas
Phone line: 1-800-452-9292

DriveTexas, Texas Department of Transportation

Information on road conditions in the state is available at DriveTexas™ or by phone at 800-452-9292.

Snow and ice, winter weather driving tips, Texas Department of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

The words

What Texas calls each state of a road

TxDOT runs 7 steps on DriveTexas, from Accidents to Other. TxDOT publishes a definition beside them.

These are Texas’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.

TxDOT’s own labels, in the order TxDOT lists them. The second column is the state’s own definition.
What the map says	What TxDOT says it means
Accidents	Not defined
Closures	Not defined
Construction	Not defined
Damage	Not defined
Flood	Not defined
Ice/Snow	Not defined
Other	Includes conditions not listed above, such as parades, special events, low visibility, etc

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

When a road shuts

Who closes a road in Texas

TxDOT reports closures itself as one of the DriveTexas condition types, and its help pages separate those from the crowdsourced closure lines that arrive with the Google traffic overlay.

Conditions in DriveTexas are verified by TxDOT employees and contractors.

Snow and ice, winter weather driving tips, Texas 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

Texas snow plow tracker questions

Does Texas have a snow plow tracker?

Why is there no plow tracker in Texas?

What is DriveTexas?

What do the road condition colours mean in Texas?

Who closes a road in Texas?

How do I report a road problem in Texas?

An overhead message sign on a snowy interstate reading ICY ROADS POSSIBLE USE CAUTION, with traffic in the right lanes and a snow covered carriageway beyond the barrier — A state message sign carrying the same advisory the online map is carrying, to the same drivers, a few minutes later. Most of what a 511 map publishes began as a report from an operations centre like the one running this gantry, which is why the map and the sign almost never disagree and why the map is usually first. “2022-02-14 07 29 49 "Icy Roads Possible - Use Caution" displayed on a variable message sign during a snow shower along southbound Interstate 95 (J.F.K. Memorial Highway) between Exit 67 and Exit 64 on the edge of White Marsh and Rossville in Maryland”, Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0

Plow trackers in other states

Texas studded tire datesWhen studs are legal on Texas 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.

Texas read September 23, 2026 from Snow and ice, winter weather driving tips, Texas Department of Transportation, linked above. Departments replace these services between seasons and a layer that ran last winter may not run this one, so TxDOT’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.