Looks like Mother Nature decided to pull an early April Fool's prank

How much storm damage an individual tree suffers is related to its existing structure & habit - whether genetically determined or managed - rather than which landmass on which a given species evolved. So whether a species is "native" - by any definition - is not a predictor of how or how well it will respond to storm damage. Snow, including heavy wet snow (here: March snow), falls all over the earth as you get closer to the poles, so species in all of those regions have evolved with snow for millennia.

Ron is correct: the timing of a given weather event & its related factors heavily influence failure. The same tree with its current structure may bear weight of snow & ice well when dormant (in winter), but once those leaf buds start to pop - as the Red Maples & Elms have around here in the past week - that add'l leaf tissue & all the water it holds affect how the tree manages the weight of snow/ice newly distributed throughout a canopy. Also correct: March snow is (usually) a whole different game from the same volume of January snow: it's wetter, & relatedly, the temperature of the world it falls onto is significantly warmer, too. Wind & microclimate are factors here, too, as they affect uptake & budding.

Some of those native Magnolias (& non-native) in the Mt A cemetery & AArboretum did indeed "do just fine" in that they survived, but their resultant poor structures after 4/1/97 made them less resilient to subsequent challenges (weight of water in foliage/rainfall, snow/ice, wind, rapid/unseasonable temp changes, etc). The reason why they look as good & have weathered subsequent storms as they have since '97 is the result of management by humans, not some magical native bred resilience. Also, the "worst" of them were removed in '97 & '98.