Stories by Patty Wetli

Strong winds are creating dangerous conditions along the lakeshore, prompting the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications to issue a lakeshore flood advisory until 6 a.m. Tuesday.

If the FDA allows emergency use, Moderna expects to have 20 million doses ready for the U.S. by year’s end. Recipients will need two doses, so that’s enough for 10 million people. 

As officials imposed sweeping restrictions designed to stop a sustained and grave surge of the coronavirus, Chicago health officials stopped showcasing the number of people who test positive for COVID-19.

“Communities that have been most negatively affected by COVID-19 are less likely to say they would to vaccinate their children and themselves against COVID-19,” said Dr. Matt Davis of Lurie Children’s Hospital.

Growing up in a family of 19 children, Jermaine Jordan learned both how to cook and to share. Today, he’s using those skills on a much larger scale at Healthy Hot Free Meals, a restaurant he opened in October.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert said Sunday that the U.S. may see “surge upon a surge” of the coronavirus in the weeks after Thanksgiving.

It is the third day in a row that fewer than 8,000 new cases of the virus have been reported during a month that is on pace to exceed 300,000 infections.

Wisconsin finished its recount of votes cast in this month’s presidential election on Sunday, with only minuscule changes in the results that saw Democrat Joe Biden defeat Republican Donald Trump in the battleground state.

Premiering Tuesday, a new documentary from WTTW senior producer Daniel Andries analyzes how reporters, producers and staff at WTTW News adapted to report the story of a year unlike any other.

Guadalupe Lopez died earlier this month of COVID-19. He was 58 and among the essential workers who must show up to work, and one of the more than 9,100 people who have died from the disease in the Chicago area.

Black Friday online sales hit a new record this year as pandemic-wary Americans filled virtual carts instead of real ones.

Despite a cultural tradition of using family members or friends for early childhood care, many parents in majority Latino communities want to enroll their children in formal child care centers, but are stymied by multiple factors, a new study finds.

Faulting inaction in Washington, governors and state lawmakers are racing to get pandemic relief to small-business owners, the unemployed, renters and others whose livelihoods have been upended by COVID-19.

Statues of three United States Presidents, a “Pioneers Statue” and numerous storefronts were targeted by vandals on Thanksgiving, with “land back” graffitied on some of the property.

Is there a middle ground between obliterating leaves and letting nature take its course? We asked an expert from the Chicago Botanic Garden.

After an unprecedented year, we take a hard look at the pandemic-ravaged economy, as businesses gear up for the all-important holiday retail season. 

The coronavirus testing numbers that have guided much of the nation’s response to the pandemic are likely to be erratic over the next week or so, experts said Friday, as fewer people get tested during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Positive developments on the vaccine front have driven double-digit gains in the major indexes this month as investors look forward to progress in gaining control over the pandemic that plunged the global economy into its deepest slump since the 1930s.

The pandemic in Illinois reached another sobering mark on Friday, after health officials reported 12,029 total deaths linked to the pandemic and 705,063 infections. 

More than 25,000 migrating sandhill cranes are making a pit stop at Indiana’s Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. The bird’s numbers have rebounded thanks to wetland conservation efforts, but now climate change threatens to undo that progress. 

The coronavirus presented huge challenges for the fall semester for U.S. colleges that opened the academic year with in-person learning, including some that took a battering from outbreaks.

In normal times, Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year. But these are not normal times: The economy is tanking and crowds are expected to be dramatically diminished as coronavirus cases spike and shoppers do more of their purchases online.

Ready or not, the holidays have arrived. Here’s how some of Chicago’s most beloved traditions and experiences have adapted to the coronavirus pandemic to help bring some holiday cheer to 2020.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will leave the White House if the Electoral College formalizes President-elect Joe Biden’s victory — even as he insisted such a decision would be a “mistake.”

Watch the Nov. 26, 2020 full episode of “Chicago Tonight.”

Former Bears offensive lineman James “Big Cat” Williams previews the Bears matchup Sunday against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.