>>2833386Flagstaff, AZ is historically the 7th or 8th snowiest city in the entire USA with a minimum population of 50k residents. Even with recent 30 year non-stop drought the average snowfall is still 88 inches (2.24m) a winter in town and 230 inches (5.9m) 3,000 ft higher in the San Francisco Peaks. There are only a handful of places on Earth that get the record snowfall amounts found in the western USA and western Canada (Alps, Japan, small parts of Himalayas, small parts of Siberia around Lake Baikal and the Caucasus). Arizona and New Mexico combined have roughly 68,000 sq miles (176.12k sq km) of forest, which is more forest area than in Utah and Colorado combined. The forest around Flagstaff continues for 250 air miles into NM. That said the forest is still threatened with human development and farming/grazing, and human started wildfires. Studies have been done that show that the SW has historically been covered by forest for at least the last 11,000 years at middle and high elevations windward to the Pacific ocean. Studies have also shown that the last 500 years conclusively were interspersed with periods of drought and periods of extreme flooding/extreme snowfall events. The longest (moderate) drought period lasted over 100 years, despite this the forest has always remained. During the ice age prior to the Younger Dryas, Flagstaff, Arizona had a Dfc (cold subarctic) or Et (tundra) Koppen climate with black spruce taiga and aspen parklands similar to modern NWT, Canada and mammoths lived as far south as what is now Mexico. Winters in the AZ high country hit temps as low as -22f (-30C) almost every single winter in multiple locations, a common location is Mormon lake (pleistocene lake/marsh remnant).
