Off topic, but...
Potential energy strikes me as a different kind of scientific attribute.
The snow that has higher potential energy has no measurable quantity any different from snow with less. I believe it is correct to say that potential energy is impossible to detect with the senses or their extensions.
Since you include "extensions", I'm not sure I completely agree. In my career, my "extensions" have included everything from SEMs (Scanning Electron Microscopes) to surveying instruments and astronomical telescopes.
One can certainly measure (sense) gravity and elevation and density and mass (as well as temperature).
I used to do R&D on solid state sensors, so I know that one can measure electrical potentials that are a function of the pressure at the bottom of a water column in a gravitational field.
Perhaps you are correct. With our human senses, we may not be able to sense energy directly. (We sense IR as a change in skin temperature when it is absorbed, for example).
But, with our extended senses, we can certainly sense all the components required to calculate potential energy.
~~~~~~~~~~
Let me look at it from a different direction: when I was on the upper slopes of Fujiyama, I was acutely conscious of the energy I was adding to the potential energy of my backpack's contents -- every step of the way up! '-)
But, when I set the pack down at the edge of the crater, I couldn't sense its (or my) increased potential energy. But, boy, as we "skated" down that loose cinder slope on our descent -- what a spectacular demonstration of the conversion of potential to kinetic energy that was!
Perhaps you're right: we can calculate potential energy from components we can sense (with our extended senses) -- and we can sense the conversion to/from kinetic energy -- but, maybe we can't sense potential energy directly...
~~~~~~~~~
(Pardon the ramble -- I used your question as an excuse to "wind down my mental potential energy" before retiring... LOL!!) Thanks for the excuse to do so!
G'night...