Mawson described snowdrift at Cape Dennison in 1915:
In the autumn overcast weather with heavy falls of snow prevailed, with the result that the air for several months was seldom free from drift. Indeed, during that time, there were not many days when objects a hundred yards away could be seen distinctly. Whatever else happened, the wind never abated, and so, even when the snow had ceased falling and the sky was clear, the drift continued until all the loose accumulations on the hinterland, for hundreds of miles back, had been swept out to sea. Day after day deluges of drift streamed passed the Hut, at times so dense as to totally obscure objects three feet away, until it seemed as if the atmosphere were almost solid snow.
Picture drift so dense that daylight comes through dully, though, maybe, the sun shines in a cloudless sky; the drift is hurled, screaming through space, at a hundred miles an hour, and the temperature is below zero, Fahrenheit. You have then the bare, rough facts concerning the worst blizzards of Adelie Land. The actual experience of them is another thing.
Shroud the infuriated elements in the darkness of a polar night, and the blizzard is presented in a severer aspect. A plunge into the writhing storm-whirl stamps upon the senses an indelible and awful impression seldom equaled in the whole gamut of natural experience. The world is a void, grisley, fierce and appalling. We stumble and struggle through the Stygian gloom; the merciless blast – an incubus of vengeance – stabs, buffets and freezes; the stinging drift blinds and chokes.
In its ruthless grip we realize that we are, as Henley says, but
“poor windlestraws
On the great, sullen, roaring pool of Time.”
(Mawson; 2002;83)