Blog
Scanned your yard in winter? How to allow for summer leaves
Bare oaks and maples flatter a Starlink scan. Measure them as they'll look in July, not as they look today.
$100First Starlink? The pre-order checklist and our referral link- Starlink lists new leaves in spring, when trees fill in, among the most common new obstructions.
- A scan taken while oaks, maples and poplars are bare shows less blocked sky than the same spot will show in summer.
- Measure leafy trees to the outline of their bare branch tips and treat that whole outline as solid.
- Pines, firs, spruces and cedars block the same sky all year, so a winter scan of them is a fair scan.
- If bare leafy crowns already reach the borderline zone from your dish spot, find a better spot or scan again after leaf-out before you order.
A winter scan shows your yard at its best. Oaks, maples and poplars block far more sky once they leaf out, and Starlink lists spring leaves among the most common new obstructions, so judge your leafy trees by the outline of their bare branch tips, not by the open gaps you see today.
That doesn’t mean you have to wait until May. Most yards can be sorted now with a fist, the sky angle calculator and the Starlink app, as long as you measure the trees the way they’ll look in July.
Why a winter scan flatters your yard
Starlink’s help article on fixing obstructions names “new branches or leaves, especially in the spring, when trees fill in and are more likely to block the field of view” as a common new obstruction. A scan between late fall and early spring looks through bare crowns. The same spot in July looks at a wall of leaves.
Leaves don’t let enough signal through to count as open sky. Starlink says a single tree branch, a pole or a roof can be enough to interrupt service, and it publishes no figure for signal passing through foliage. Treat a full summer crown as solid.
The dish can work around some blockage. Starlink says it keeps learning where the blockages are and picks the most stable connection. It also says an obstruction that stays in the field of view can still cause intermittent outages, dropped packets and lower speeds. A tree that fills in every summer is exactly that kind of obstruction for half the year.
Evergreen or leafy: sort your trees in five minutes
Stand where the dish would go and turn all the way around. Put every tree that rises well above the horizon into one of two groups.
| Tree type | Common US examples | What a winter scan tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Evergreen | Pines, firs, spruces, cedars, hemlocks, live oaks, southern magnolias | The real picture. They block the same sky all year. |
| Leafy (deciduous) | Oaks, maples, poplars, ash, birch, aspen, sycamore | The best case. Add the full summer crown before you decide. |
If every tall tree near the spot is evergreen, the season doesn’t change your answer, and a clean winter scan is a clean scan. Go straight to the app check.
If even one tall leafy tree stands on a side where the dish will look, measure it properly.
Estimate the summer canopy from the bare branches
You don’t need a tree’s height to measure how high it sits in the sky. A closed fist held at arm’s length covers about 10° of sky, the rule of thumb amateur astronomers use.
- Stand at the dish spot, at the height you plan to mount. For a roof spot, get as close to roof height as you safely can.
- Hold your arm straight out, fist closed, with the bottom of your fist on the horizon.
- Stack fists up to the highest bare branch tip of each leafy tree. Count to the tips, not to the gaps between them.
- Add half a fist on top. That’s our rule of thumb for leaf mass and a season of new shoots: a safety margin, not a measurement.
- Write down each tree’s side of the yard, its fist count and whether any branch hangs over the spot.
- Enter tree height, distance and dish height into the sky angle calculator if you know them. It returns the angle and the dish height you’d need.
Here’s how this site reads those numbers. Under 2 fists (about 20°) matches the clear-sky line in Starlink’s guidance for business installs, which asks for open sky from about 20° above the horizon all the way around. Over about 3.5 fists (35°) is our reading of where a treetop sits inside the 110° field of view Starlink lists for its home dishes. Between the two is borderline. Starlink publishes no minimum height and no distance-from-trees rule for home installs, so these lines are our geometry, not Starlink rules. The field of view page explains them.
A worked example, by our geometry: a 60 ft maple stands 80 ft from a dish on a 20 ft roof edge. Its top sits about 27° up, inside the borderline zone, and in winter you’d see sky through it. Raise the dish to 30 ft and the top drops to about 21°. Keep the dish at 20 ft but pick a spot 120 ft from the tree, and the top drops to about 18°, under the clear-sky line. Distance often beats height with leafy trees that aren’t much taller than the house.
When leaf-out happens where you live
Leaf-out timing shifts by region and by year. Spring usually reaches the Gulf Coast and the Southeast before the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and the high country of the Mountain West. The USA National Phenology Network publishes spring leaf-out maps that show how far spring has moved in your area this year. The surest sign is your own yard: once the trees on the side the dish faces are in full leaf, scan again.
| Region | Leafy trees that change the picture | Evergreens that don’t |
|---|---|---|
| Northeast | Maple, oak, ash, birch | White pine, hemlock, spruce |
| Upper Midwest | Maple, oak, basswood, aspen | Pines, spruce, cedar |
| Southeast | Oaks, sweetgum, tulip poplar | Loblolly and longleaf pine, live oak, magnolia |
| Pacific Northwest | Bigleaf maple, red alder, cottonwood | Douglas fir, western red cedar, hemlock |
| Mountain West | Aspen, cottonwood | Lodgepole pine, spruce, fir |
In the Pacific Northwest and much of the Southeast, the evergreens usually decide the answer and leaf-out matters less. In the Northeast and the Midwest, leafy hardwoods often stand closest to the house, so the winter-to-summer gap is widest there.
Order now or scan again in spring? A decision table
Use the fist counts from the dish spot, with the half-fist margin added to every leafy tree.
| What you measured | What to do |
|---|---|
| Only evergreens rise above 2 fists | The season doesn’t matter. Confirm with the app scan and decide now. |
| Leafy trees, but every one stays under 2 fists | Leaf-out shouldn’t change much. Confirm with the app scan. |
| Leafy trees reach 2 to 3.5 fists on one side | Borderline. Look for a higher or farther spot now, or scan again after leaf-out. |
| Leafy trees pass 3.5 fists on two or more sides | Wait. Raise, move or trim first, then measure again. |
| Branches hang over the dish spot | Wait. Pick a different spot: in summer the dish would sit under a roof of leaves. |
If you end up in the last two rows, the fit check and the trees guide walk through the fixes in order: move, raise or clear.
If you already ordered: the first leafy weeks
Some Starlink behavior is worth knowing once the trees fill in:
- The obstruction map fills in on its own. Starlink says the dish can detect most obstructions in less than a day, and the map keeps updating. Look at it again when the leaves are fully out.
- The Obstructed alert can fade. Starlink says it can disappear as the dish learns the surrounding obstructions and gets better at avoiding them.
- Brief switches aren’t a reason to move. Starlink says switches around trees and buildings are generally imperceptible, and not to move the dish for that alone.
- Regular drops are. If video calls start freezing every afternoon in June, a crown has moved into the dish’s view. Starlink’s own order is to move the dish to a clearer spot first, then clear the branch or raise the dish. The fix guide covers each step.
Questions this page answers
Do leaves block Starlink?
Treat them as solid. Starlink names a single tree branch as enough to interrupt service and publishes no figure for signal passing through foliage. The dish works around trees by using satellites in open sky, not by seeing through leaves.
Is a winter obstruction scan accurate?
For evergreens, yes. For leafy trees it shows the best case, because the crowns fill in from spring on. Measure to the bare branch tips, or scan again once the leaves are out.
Should I wait until spring to order Starlink?
Only if your bare leafy trees already reach into the sky the dish uses, or you can't tell. If the bare crowns stay low from your chosen spot, leaf-out is unlikely to change the answer much.
Will the Obstructed alert go away on its own after the leaves come in?
Sometimes. Starlink says the alert can disappear as the dish learns the surrounding obstructions, but a tree that stays in the field of view can still cause dropouts and lower speeds.
When do trees leaf out where I live?
It varies by region and by year, and spring usually reaches the South before the North. The USA National Phenology Network publishes spring leaf-out maps you can check for your area, and your own trees are the final word.
What we checked this page against
- How to fix obstructions (Starlink help center) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- How do I check for obstructions before installing Starlink? (Starlink help center) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- How do obstructions affect my Starlink connection? (Starlink help center) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- How should I interpret the obstruction map? (Starlink help center) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- Standard 4 X Kit Specifications (Starlink PDF) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- Prepare for Install and Select a Location (Starlink help center, business install guidance) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- Sky measurements: degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds (EarthSky) · retrieved Nov 3, 2026
- Spring leaf index maps (USA National Phenology Network) · retrieved Nov 4, 2026
Each number on this page traces back to one of these entries; our fact rules explain how. If a reading has drifted, the corrections log shows how it gets fixed.