(Darius Cotoi / Unsplash)

It wasn't exactly a winter wonderland, but the first snowflakes of the season were recorded Monday morning at O'Hare, according to the National Weather Service.

Recovery work after the Repsol oil spill. (Courtesy of Oceana Peru)

Recently, two researchers with Brookfield Zoo received prestigious awards for their work in the field. Their current work focuses on the impacts of major oil spills on marine life.

The magic stump. (Bob Dolgan / Turnstone Films)
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Some 50 miles south of Champaign-Urbana, a tree stump in the middle of otherwise tilled acreage has become the stuff of legends. And now it's the subject of a short documentary, "The Magic Stump."

(Mark Thomas / Pixabay)

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in Sackett v. EPA, which challenges the scope of the Clean Water Act and could have far-reaching implications for the nation's wetlands.

(WTTW News)

Chicago has long had a tortured relationship with recycling. City leaders have scrapped old programs and replaced them with new ones, but the result is the same  recycling rates in the single digits. 

(WTTW News)

Chicago bills itself as a world-class city, but when it comes to recycling, its performance has been less than first-rate. 

The bridge leading from Fort Myers to Pine Island, Fla., is heavily damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. Due to the damage, the island can only be reached by boat or air. (AP Photo/  Gerald Herbert)

Florida, with nearly four dozen reported dead, was hit hardest by the Category 4 hurricane, one of the strongest to make landfall in the United States. Flooded roadways and washed-out bridges to barrier islands left many people isolated amid limited cellphone service and a lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity and the internet.

In this photo taken by a drone, boats lie scattered amidst mobile homes after the passage of Hurricane Ian, on San Carlos Island, in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

With South Carolina’s coast under a hurricane warning, many left Charleston for higher ground and store owners used sandbags to ward off high water levels in an area prone to inundation.

Vehicles sit in flood water at the Palm Isle apartments in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Floodwaters rose waist-high near Orlando as one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the United States crossed the peninsula. Ian's tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 415 miles, drenching much of Florida and the southeastern Atlantic coast.

Actor Nick Offerman has thrown his support behind a forest preserve tax levy. (YouTube)
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His alter ego, Ron Swanson, may have been an anti-government government employee, but in real life, actor Nick Offerman has thrown his support behind a referendum that would increase the property tax levy for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.

An uprooted tree, toppled by strong winds from the outer bands of Hurricane Ian, rests in a parking lot of a shopping center, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, in Cooper City, Fla. (AP Photo / Wilfredo Lee)

About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before the storm hit the coast with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. It was heading inland, where it was expected to weaken, at about 9 mph, but residents in central Florida could still experience hurricane-force winds.

Monty and Rose, memorialized in limestone rock along Chicago's lakefront. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
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The beloved duo live on in limestone, their instantly recognizable images carved into a block of the rock wall that separates the dunes from an adjacent paved path. They now join the thousands of modern-day “petroglyphs” that date back to at least the 1930s.

The Michigan City Generating Station has been burning coal for electricity for nearly a century. (WTTW News)
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Northern Indiana Public Service Company is retiring the 130-acre Michigan City Generating Station, which has been burning coal for electricity for nearly a century. The company is also cleaning up decades of coal ash byproduct. But advocates say plans to leave some coal ash on the site puts groundwater and Lake Michigan in danger of contamination. 

This illustration made available by Johns Hopkins APL and NASA depicts NASA’s DART probe, foreground right, and Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube, bottom right, at the Didymos system before impact with the asteroid Dimorphos, left. (Steve Gribben / Johns Hopkins APL / NASA via AP)

A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

Waves kick up under a dark sky along the shore of Batabano, Cuba, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. (AP Photo / Ramon Espinosa)

Ian was forecast to hit the western tip of Cuba as a major hurricane and then become an even stronger Category 4 with top winds of 140 mph over warm Gulf of Mexico waters before striking Florida. As of Monday, Tampa and St. Petersburg appeared to be among the most likely targets for their first direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921.

This view of Jupiter was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 17th science pass of Jupiter. (Courtesy of NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS)

Jupiter is making its closest approach to Earth since 1963 on Monday night, and the views should be especially spectacular.