Full-fledged winter conditions returned during the day on Friday, with an extreme upslope snow event that quickly turned the summit a powdery white again. Persistent bands of snow showers set up directly over the Whites, and snow fell all day on Saturday dropping a total of 11 inches before tapering early Saturday night. Strong winds accompanied the falling snow leading to dense blowing snow that dropped visibility as low as ten feet at times. Massive snowdrifts returned and made things quite interesting for us, especially when venturing to the precipitation can. Generally, when we go to collect the precipitation can, we exit through the main entrance of the Sherman Adams Building, and the building acts to block the wind for a portion of our walk when the winds are from the west or northwest direction. Yesterday when I opened the front door, the snow was more than halfway up the door. This creates problems for us because walking through compact snowdrifts is, well, impossible. The alternate path to the precipitation can takes us out through the observation deck and around the Sherman Adams Building, which is entirely exposed to the winds when they are blowing from the west or northwest. When the winds are not too strong this is not a big deal, but last night when I ventured to the can the winds were sustained around 80 mph with gusts exceeding 100 mph. On top of this, the visibility had dropped to around 10 feet which was extremely disorienting. Along my path to the can, there were snowdrifts scattered across the summit cone that were well above my head making navigation difficult. GPS kept rerouting me… When I made the decision to return to working for the Mount Washington Observatory, I was obviously hoping for some extreme winters. The winter of 2016-2017 has certainly not let me down!