Chicago woke up today looking like it got a full-on winter makeover overnight—no filter needed. After a lake-effect tantrum barreled through the region late Sunday into Monday, the city’s first snow of the season didn’t just dust the ground. It buried whole zip codes, shut down commutes and gave weather apps a minor identity crisis. Depending on where you live, you either got a polite two-inch “hello” or a foot of snow dropped on your block like a prank from the weather gods.

The storm’s narrow but “ferocious” band meant the totals looked like a scatterplot gone rogue: Momence clocked a staggering 12 inches in barely six hours, parts of northwest Indiana hit double digits and even neighborhoods within Chicago saw wildly different scenes—West Ridge hit 3.5 inches while O’Hare barely

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