Check out these glorious photos of Chicago after the first snow of the season

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 registered 1.7. Add in 50 miles per hour wind gusts, flashes of lightning, school closures and hundreds of flight cancellations, and suddenly Monday felt like January in disguise.

But once the plows did their first swipe and the traffic stopped skidding, Chicagoans did what they always do: they stepped outside with phones in hand. From snow-caked promenades along Lake Michigan to side streets transformed into quiet white tunnels, the season’s first snowfall delivered the kind of cinematic moments that almost make the commute chaos worth it.

Below, check out some glorious photos capturing Chicago’s first snow of the season: