The turbulent properties of a thermal wake are investigated in the particular case where the initial conditions producing the kinematic wake and the temperature field are different from one another. In such a case it is observed that the correlation coefficientRv&Vthgr;is not zero at the point where the mean temperature gradient is zero. Accordingly, there is a region where the ’’production terms’’ of the temperature variance are negative. Comparisons are made between kinematic and thermal structures determined from a spectral analysis. The thermal field is found to have some degree of independence from the kinematic field. The large and small structures of each field are different, but they can be related by translating the axisuv¯=0 of the thermal wake until it coincides with the axisv&thgr;¯=0 of the kinematic wake.