This browser does not support the Video element.
6 p.m. forecast for Chicagoland on Jan. 12
Emily Wahls has your weather update!
CHICAGO - Check out the pancake ice on Lake Michigan Sunday. It is relatively rare and usually occurs in the Baltic Sea and Antarctica on very cold oceans and lakes, according to the U.K. Met Office.
It’s not a pancake. Just ice, shaped like a pancake. When lake or seawater begins to freeze, wave action breaks the layer into chunks. The chunks knock into one another and eventually end up round. The rims around the edges form when sea spray from waves freezes to the edges.
They are usually slushy, soft ice.
The National Weather Service in Chicago showed pancake ice forming in just 24 hours on Lake Michigan Friday.
The NWS also tweeted this photo of larger pancake ice from the UK Met Office.
If cold enough, the pancakes can pile up to create rafts eventually forming larger sheets of ice, reported NASA.