Lake Michigan Thermal Energy Affects Winter Storm

Infrared Thermography is an important predictive maintenance tool used throughout industry to identify equipment failures that are in-process.  The basis for the application of this PdM technology is that the emission of thermal energy, or heat, is associated with many in-process failure modes.  But is thermography the only way to detect heat?  Absolutely not, as is evident in this radar image seen today at Intellicast.com.  The emission of thermal energy from the relatively warm waters of Lake Michigan is causing the frozen precipitation of the storm to change back into rain!   As you can see, this effect diminishes and disappears in the northern half of the lake as the lake temperature is lower due to generally lower ambient temperatures in the northern region.

Radar Image Taken at 16:15 GMT