I work at the place this tree is located. There were a series of events that led up to what happened to the tree.
In the Fall of 2020, the Wasatch Front (the urban area that contains 80%+ of Utah's 3.3 million people) experienced one of the worst wind storms in our recorded history with winds well within hurricane force. The storm toppled hundreds to possibly thousands of trees. The sequoia almost fell over, too, but in the end it made it through. Even though it didn't fall over, the tree was now leaning more than it did before. And while it's very true that we are in the middle of a megadrought and have been getting hardly any snow, in the two or three instances that we did get snow that winter, it was very heavy, wet, sticky, and humid snow; very different from our usual dry powdery snow. Because the tree was now leaning, more snow was able to accumulate on it and it finally broke.
I remember the one morning I was walking into work and noticed something was missing but wasn't sure what. It was a few moments later that I saw the tree laying smack dab in the middle of the shrubs out front.
The tree is still there, but it's only about 8 feet tall now.
