Storm Watch
Durham Region snow plow tracker, and when your street gets cleared.
Durham Region snow plow tracker links for every town, and the Environment Canada alert in effect now.
- Every town's official tracker, in one place
- The live Environment Canada alert, quoted
- Northline clears at 3 cm measured
See all three memberships and what each one covers
Green in summer. Clear in winter.
What Environment Canada says
For Pickering, Oshawa and southern Durham Region. We do not forecast the weather and we do not reword anybody who does, so what appears here is their sentence or nothing.
Data Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada
What Northline does
The residential route runs on measured accumulation, once 3 cm has fallen. Not on a forecast, and not on a warning. Below 3 cm it is salt and the walkway, not the blade. Commercial is a separate product at 5 cm.
- Commercial and medical access first, overnight
- Platinum, sequenced first, to a 6:30 AM target
- Gold, to a 7 AM target after overnight snow
- Silver, a separate daytime windrow pass, by 5 PM
Those are targets and not guarantees, and the full explanation is here. None of this moves when the forecast does, which is the whole point of buying it.
The route is not rolling
The season opens on November 1.
Members and strangers see the same line on this page, and it is derived from the date and from the published trigger rather than from anybody’s opinion about the sky. Environment Canada’s own words, when there is a warning in effect, are in the panel above.
Your town, their plow
Every Durham municipality's own snow plow tracker
We do not forecast the weather and we do not run the city plow. Your street is cleared by your town, and every one of them publishes what its crews are doing. Two of these are live instruments rather than a policy page.
Oshawa
A live report of which road class the crews are working on right now.
Pickering
A live map of the winter operations across the city.
Whitby
The clearing order, and the town's own windrow assistance service.
Ajax
The town's road priority order and its winter service standards.
Clarington, including Bowmanville, Courtice and Newcastle
The municipality's clearing order and its sidewalk rules.
Snow clearing and winter maintenance What Northline does in Bowmanville and Courtice
Durham Region, the regional roads
Taunton, Simcoe, Brock and the other regional roads belong to the Region, not to the town.
Regional road maintenance What Northline does in Durham Region
Links open on each municipality's own website.
Why your street is not plowed yet, and why there is a ridge
The order is set by Ontario's Minimum Maintenance Standards, not by your town on the night, and it is the same across Durham.
- Arterials and bus routes first, while it is still snowing. The provincial clock starts when accumulation begins.
- Collector roads next. The ones from your subdivision to the arterial.
- Residential streets once the snowfall has ended. Your street is not late. On a long storm that means the following afternoon.
- Then the windrow. The heaviest snow of the storm, dropped across a driveway you have just cleared. Removing it is the homeowner's job in every Durham municipality.
None of that order applies to an ice event, because every trigger above is written in centimetres of accumulation and a glaze event never produces any. Freezing rain in Durham Region covers what the municipality does instead, and the separate deadline the by-law puts on you.
The windrow is the part Northline takes, on every tier
Gold and Platinum have the whole driveway cleared, windrow included. On Silver we take the windrow off the apron by 5 PM, after every storm we run.
Several Durham towns run windrow assistance for seniors and residents with disabilities. Who clears the windrow in each Durham town.
Questions people ask during a storm
When will my street be plowed in Oshawa?
Oshawa publishes a live snow clearing activity report, linked at the top of this page. Arterials first, residential streets once the snowfall ends.
Does Northline have its own plow tracker?
No, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. This page puts every town's own official tracker in one place, beside Environment Canada's own words and beside what Northline actually does at a measured 3 cm.
Is there a snow warning in Durham Region right now?
The panel at the top of this page carries Environment Canada's own words for Pickering, Oshawa and southern Durham, re-read every ten minutes while the page is open. If it is blank, there is no alert in effect or we could not reach them, and the link beside it goes straight to their page.
Why is there a ridge of snow across the end of my driveway after I cleared it?
That is the municipal windrow, dropped by the plow as it clears your street. Clearing it is the homeowner's job in Durham, and Northline takes it off every member's driveway.
Does Northline clear on the forecast?
No. The residential route runs on measured accumulation once 3 cm has fallen. Below that it is salt and the walkway. Commercial is a separate 5 cm product.
How early is my driveway cleared after an overnight storm?
Platinum is sequenced first against a 6:30 AM target, Gold against a 7 AM target. Both are targets, never guarantees. Silver runs a daytime windrow pass by 5 PM.
Andrew answers, October 2026
Why is the morning clearing time a target rather than a promise?
Because a promise about the morning is a promise about the weather, and nobody can make one of those honestly. What I can promise is where you sit in the route and the order the route runs in, and both of those are published on this site. In eighteen years of Oshawa data the worst winter had twenty four clearing days and the mildest had four, and a promise written to survive the worst of those is a promise priced for it. A target I actually hit is worth more to you than a promise I have quietly priced the risk of breaking.
One of these goes on each page and it is replaced monthly. If the question you have is not here, ask it: 905-244-5779.
The tracker shows the plow, not the windrow
The minute the municipal plow passes the house is the minute the ridge appears across the end of your driveway, and moving that ridge is the property owner's job in every town on this map. Send the address and I will price taking it off your hands, the same day.
Green in summer. Clear in winter.