Another side tale
There's another old whiteout story from the days of yore. I can't remember who told me, but it was back in the days of the dogs, before my time.
Some guys and their dogs had sledded out to one of the remote huts and harnessed their dogs. Out one particular window was a view of the endless white snow sheet. The next cloudy morning they were perplexed by the appearance of a mountain in the distance, where there was none. This alone is not unusual, I have seen mountains from far over the horizon that are refracted in the lower atmosphere to become visible, and another rare phenomenon sometimes even has them reflected upside down, but I digress.
Curious at the appearance of this mountain, the intrepid folk ventured outside and nothing was visible in the distance.
Back inside they ventured and they could see it.
Back outside they went, and walked behind the hut. Low and behold a husky had done its business about a metre from the window on a small sastrugi (small snow ridge).
The whiteout effect is so powerful, and the brain so easily deceived even to those who spend time in it, that they mistook a dog turd at waist height one metre away for a mountain range 100 miles away.