Vermont Snow Plow Tracker and Road Conditions

Q: Where can I see where the plows are in Vermont?

VTrans calls it VTrans Plow Finder, and it runs at https://plowtrucks.vtrans.vermont.gov/. VTrans describes it this way: "Plows are shown with an orange truck icon representing the last reported position and direction of the truck."

Q: What is New England 511?

New England 511 is Vermont Agency of Transportation's own travel information service. New England 511 carries traffic cameras. VTrans describes it this way: "511 is a free traveler information service. Use the 511 services to plan your commute, receive traffic and transit reports and more!"

Trucks on the map

What the state publishes

Live truck positions

New England 511

The map

VTrans, Vermont Agency of Transportation

1

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 Vermont

Trucks on the map

VTrans publishes where its plows are and when a plow last came past on New England 511.

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: VTrans Plow Finder
Where it lives: New England 511
Shows a last pass: Yes. The layer records when a truck was last down a road, not only where one is now.
Trucks in the fleet: 275
How often it updates: VTrans says the trail shows each truck's recorded path over the last 90 minutes and that clicking a dot gives the time the truck reported passing that point.

Open VTrans Plow Finder

VTrans describes it in its own words, from VTrans Plow Finder Map - Current Plow Locations, Vermont Agency of Transportation, read September 23, 2026.

Plows are shown with an orange truck icon representing the last reported position and direction of the truck.

VTrans Plow Finder Map - Current Plow Locations, Vermont Agency of Transportation, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

The map

What New England 511 shows

New England 511 carries traffic cameras. VTrans describes it this way: "511 is a free traveler information service. Use the 511 services to plan your commute, receive traffic and transit reports and more!"

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.

Vermont is one of the few states in the region that puts its plow trucks on a public map, showing each truck's last reported position and its path over the previous 90 minutes alongside county level road conditions.

The map: New England 511
Cameras: Roadside cameras

New England 511, Vermont Agency of Transportation

511 is a free traveler information service. Use the 511 services to plan your commute, receive traffic and transit reports and more!

About, New England 511 (Maine Department of Transportation, New Hampshire Department of Transportation, Vermont Agency of Transportation), read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

The words

What Vermont calls each state of a road

VTrans runs 1 steps on New England 511, from Good to Good. VTrans prints the labels without defining them.

These are Vermont’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.

VTrans’s own labels, in the order VTrans lists them. The state prints these labels without defining them.
What the map says
Good

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

When a road shuts

Who closes a road in Vermont

Vermont's legislature set a safe roads at safe speeds standard rather than a bare roads standard, and VTrans keeps highways open to traffic rather than closing them; the Plow Finder's county level road conditions come from New England 511, which VTrans's Transportation Management Center updates in coordination with the Vermont State Police.

Vermont has a “safe-roads-at-safe-speeds” policy for winter storms. Since its adoption by the General Assembly in the early 1980’s, that policy has directed us to keep highways plowed, salted, and sanded to keep them open to traffic, and to maintain them to a degree that allows motorists to use them at reasonable speeds.

About, New England 511 (Maine Department of Transportation, New Hampshire Department of Transportation, Vermont Agency 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

Vermont snow plow tracker questions

Does Vermont have a snow plow tracker?

Where can I see where the plows are in Vermont?

What is New England 511?

What do the road condition colours mean in Vermont?

Who closes a road in Vermont?

Vermont's legislature set a safe roads at safe speeds standard rather than a bare roads standard, and VTrans keeps highways open to traffic rather than closing them; the Plow Finder's county level road conditions come from New England 511, which VTrans's Transportation Management Center updates in coordination with the Vermont State Police. VTrans puts it this way: "Vermont has a “safe-roads-at-safe-speeds” policy for winter storms. Since its adoption by the General Assembly in the early 1980’s, that policy has directed us to keep highways plowed, salted, and sanded to keep them open to traffic, and to maintain them to a degree that allows motorists to use them at reasonable speeds."

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

Vermont studded tire datesWhen studs are legal on Vermont 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.

Vermont read September 23, 2026 from About, New England 511 (Maine Department of Transportation, New Hampshire Department of Transportation, Vermont Agency of Transportation), linked above. Departments replace these services between seasons and a layer that ran last winter may not run this one, so VTrans’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.