Personally, I'd try to have as little NW opening exposure as I could. Ideally, if you could place some sort of blockage in about the area you're thinking about building......like a rectangle of snowfence maybe......and leave it over a winter to see how a similar sized structure would change snow blowing patterns, it'd be great. I don't know anyone who's ever managed to do that, but it would have changed some of our decisions when we built 40+ years ago. 

House not far from us has tiny tiny little windows on the north......they look like postage stamps on a letter. It looks really mis-proportioned to the size of the house, but I do understand what they were trying to do. I think I'd rather have normal sized windows and opt for higher quality windows, at least on that side.