Amazing! Talk about a perfect micro climare. First, it is perched on a cliff so drainage is impeccable and secondly, it is on Lake Michigan’s shore giving it lake effect warming in winter but even so, that’s incredible.

tj

Just to add:

The area also gets over 100 inches of snow on average, much of which is lake effect snow and that starts falling as soon as the air temperatures are low enough to freeze the moisture coming in off the lake on the prevailing winds.

I've never seen those sequoias myself, but yes the lake effect snow keeps the soil well insulated through the winter (actually probably a little less than 100 inches annually). Air temperatures can still get pretty cold there. The soils along the Lake Michigan shoreline are typically quite sandy and well drained. I'm not convinced that those particular sequoias have superior genes, I think it's probably more a factor of microclimate as tsugajunkie pointed out.

Correct dave,

In my post I errantly used Copemish MI average snowfall of 113"/yr. (40 mi north). The bird sanctuary/aboretum, is closer to Manistee that has 94"/yr.

I don't think the tree is right on the cliff but some distance back and the area around the tree is somewhat wooded so almost 8 ft of snow would pile up in that area, for ground insulation.

Manistee registers 35" of rain/yr on average which I believe is in addition to it's snowfall.

Possibly soil nutrients there are a factor also? I have no idea what S. giganteum needs to grow. I do know that area has vast deposits of limestone and S. g. grows where ph is 5.5 to 7.5. Just a thought. :)

Another thing that prb'ly helps it is that the snow there is usually relatively dry (not sopping wet like it often is here), so doesn't load so badly on the branches.