A powerful line of thunderstorms ripped through the Chicago region Saturday night, with wind gusts topping 80 miles per hour. The wild weather continues Sunday with winter mounting a comeback.

Cook County’s forest preserves are much loved for their picnic groves and trails. Not as well known: The forest preserve district’s role as a research hub and early warning system of sorts against zoonotic diseases.

Get ready to experience spring, a brief dalliance with summer, and then a return to winter – all in the coming weekend.

As problematic as invasive plants, pests and pathogens already are, climate change will only magnify the havoc they wreak on habitat, wildlife and even humans.

A bit of space junk is hurtling toward the moon at 5,800 miles per hour, with impact set for Friday morning.

A rare patch of 8,000-year-old remnant Illinois prairie has been granted a new three-month lease on life, as the Greater Rockford Airport Authority has again delayed demolition of the natural area, pending additional environmental review.

Field studies over the past few weeks — a collective effort known as the “Winter Grab” — were intended to boost knowledge of what happens in the five lakes when they’re covered partially or completely with ice.

The Supreme Court is hearing a case its conservative majority could use to hobble Biden administration efforts to combat climate change.

Though the Save Bell Bowl Prairie coalition earned a temporary reprieve for the natural area through March 1, the group remains at a stalemate with the Greater Rockford Airport Authority.

Chicago would permanently ban investments in oil and gas companies under a measure introduced Wednesday by Treasurer Melissa Conyears Ervin and backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

As enchanting as Lake Michigan's ice may appear, it’s unmistakably dangerous, as evidenced this week by the presumed drowning of an Indianapolis man who fell into the water off shelf ice at Indiana Dunes National Park on Monday.

Carvana’s 14-story glass tower will be a blight on Skokie, said residents, whose frustration boiled over at Tuesday night's meeting of the village’s Board of Trustees, where the project received final approval.  

The Urban River Otter Research Project recently launched in Cook County. One of the early goals is to gather otter sightings from the public in order to get a sense of the extent of the animal’s presence in and around Chicago.

The infusion from the bipartisan measure enacted in November, combined with annual funding through an ongoing recovery program, will enable agencies by 2030 to finish work on 22 sites designated a quarter-century ago as among the region's most degraded. 

An expected snow-making weather system took a swing south, downgrading anticipated accumulation in the Chicago area, according to the National Weather Service. The evening commute could still be messy.

Meteorologists have a clearer picture of the timing of Thursday’s winter storm, and it looks likely to snarl both the morning and evening commutes, especially in Chicago.