Colorado DOT Snow Plow Locations

[Mark Sedenquist]

We can mostly all agree that Colorado has one of the best organized snow removal departments in the USA.

I didn't know until today, that they maintain a live map showing where every snow plow is currently working. By clicking on the icons you can get a report from an individual snow plow operator on what direction they are moving! And the map shows the route that the snow plow operator has cleared in the last hour.

Lot of interesting data herein.

One can also view all of the still cameras found on highways in Colorado and the streaming web cams. These links are found on the upper left-hand side of the page.

This is what it looks like:

[glc]

Colorado is not the only state that does that. Off the top of my head, Utah and Michigan also show plows, and a lot of states show cameras. Safetravelusa.com will get you to all the states' sites.

[Mark Sedenquist]

Most of the DOT web sites for all of the USA sites have links to their web cameras. I use those cameras frequently when driving over passes in inclement weather. But I wasn't aware of the snow plow tracking function before.

Mark

[DonnaR57]

That's so cool!

Hubby and I were driving back from Phoenix today, and while up in the mountains east of San Diego, we passed two signs that stated something about Snow Removal in Progress. Needless to say, we were a little discomforted by that. As it turned out, there was no snow removal, though we did see signs of snow on the south side of I-8. We went through two places were a few snow flurries came down on us. I was holding my breath over the Pine Valley Bridge, a place of a recent serious accident that killed a man.


Donna

[noFanofCB]

I suspect that it's a way to satisfy the voters that CDOT is on the job as sometimes it can seem like a very long time since the plow has gone thru.

If one were to try to use this while in motion you'd have to have a navigator/systems operator do it for you.

I use the online road cameras before I head out to assess conditions and I listen to the plows talking on my scanner radio so I learn more about what they are seeing even if it isn't along my route.

At the moment I'm hearing the Colo State Patrol guys admiring how people are still driving 88 mph on ice near the Wyoming border while the CSP is cleaning up accidents in the same general area. Be careful out there!

[Mark Sedenquist]

When I am driving on frozen roads, I monitor the local school bus frequencies -- those school bus drivers are very good about identifying the worst spots for ice.

And yeah, did you see the recent video of the crash on I-70, where trucks and passenger vehicles caromed in each other for a very long time?

Mark