of course, raises the question of how you get to the bottom when your stairs are blocked with a fresh layer of snow. Why not clear a small channel so that you can get down the staircase and clear the rest from ground level?
I learned a few years ago on a trip to the Netherlands that the remaining windmills are to educate tourists.They were used for centuries to pump water from low lying farmlands into the Rhine to keep the land arable. Now they use giant electric as the land is, of course, still below sea...