Ice Explorations: To Remove the Snow or Not

I have been posting here about the dangers of Winter kill. In a previous post I had several links to older posts in which I explain the phenomenon in detail. Annual Bluegrass dies under ice after 40-50 days. We have been under snow cover for 30. Is there ice under all that snow? I assume there must be where the puddles were before the snow came. In this earlier Post I showed death patterns on the 4th fairway from 10 years ago that mirror the puddles. If that is all we have this Spring I will be thrilled. I went exploring Monday on 9 and the practice green and today on 1-7 and this is what I found:

9 green ice and slush at the time Monday Temps dropped to single digits after. assume all ice now

practice green partially exposed and very icy

Exciting 1 green no ice and green grass

2, 3 & 4 had ice and various amounts of snow cover from inches to feet. pic is 3 green

5 no ice and green grass

5 bunker looking towards 6

front of 4 and solid ice

middle of 4 ice & lots of snow

7 whoops I took a divot. Good news is you can't do that through ice

  6 had ice and 15 was ice in front and none in back. I dug two holes on each green today. They were all consistent except 15. I did not venture to the 8th or the nursery. Tally is no ice on 3 out of 10 greens checked. Not great odds. We will start removing the snow on those next week and then try to figure out the best way to melt the ice. As the divot picture shows it is always dangerous to tinker with snow on greens especially if the ground is not frozen. You can do a lot of harm to the surface. It is not an easy decision to try and remove the snow. For one thing we do not have the equipment. How do you get a snow blower to the green? How will we get dark sand or sunflower seeds to each green to melt the ice? Is the ice everywhere or will we hit patches of none and risk digging into the green? Easy to say Spring will be here but meanwhile the countdown under ice continues and with 2 feet or more of snow cover it will be awhile before the surface is exposed unless we help it along. And if we get more rain and then freezing temperatures will we build more ice or ice where we have none? More questions than answers I am afraid.