Has anyone been skating at Green River Reservoir?

[Lauren Honican]

I was just looking at some satellite imagery and Green River Reservoir in Hyde Park, VT looks to have some ice without snow on it (see attached images). I'd like to go check the thickness for skating. If anyone has been skating there this season or in the past and has any helpful tips to share, especially around hazards, I would love to hear. Thank you!

[Becka Roo]

Hi Lauren, I am interested to know what source you are using for that satellite imagery?  Thanks!

[Lauren Honican]

Absolutely. It's from Sentinel Playground. I'm new to using it having recently learned about it through an online webinar by Luc Mehl. He has some info about it on his website here. 

Here are a few tips I learned that might be helpful for others:

1. Start by searching for a place on Sentinel. 
2. Toggle on and off the top two sentinel-2 data sets as you find the body of water you want to look at. 
3. Switch the cloud cover to 100%. 
4. Within effects, click show acquisition dates. 
5. Then use the calendar to click on recent dates when the satellite passed over to find a day when it was clear enough to get a good image. (Recently this was 12-23 in many spots near me.) 
6. If you find a body of water that looks like it is iced over, you can also toggle on the moisture index to check if it's still detecting any moisture there. In my experience so far, when it's all blue, it's pretty well frozen.