My, how the weather changes

Weather forecast as of yesterday was for a dry (albeit humid) and mostly-sunny weekend, with rain resuming Monday.

This morning's forecast showed Monday's rain being moved up to early this afternoon.

By early afternoon (the day thus far having been hot, humid, sunny, and nigh-windless), the forecast showed a 50% chance of thunderstorms beginning around 1700, with points south possibly getting seriously clobbered.

Come 1500-ish, I set out to plant a pole for the long-neglected weather station.  There was thunder about!  Er.  Maybe I don't want to be outdoors with metal poles and whatnot?  Set that project aside, and look at fixing the grill, which has lost the most dangerous part of a car*.  Looks like it needs either a 5/16"-something or maybe an M8; I don't appear to have a stash of hardware of either size accessible at this point, but I might have a correct-size tap, so maybe I can make a replacement?

As it gets to be 1530-ish, things get noisy.  Windy.  Rainy.  Nearby-thundery.

Half an hour later, things are calming down again, but I don't think I'll be grilling dinner; there are more of these scattered storms on the way.

* The nut that holds the wheel.

Update:  M8x1.25 is what. And, yes, there's a tap for that.

Comments

[Rob]

I've gone down & bought a assorted nuts, washers & bolts so I had what I needed when I needed it. I'd buy a box if I needed one & had the money.
Generic hardware in a small (marked) drawer is good because the trip into town is the most expensive part of losing a nut.
I picked up a Harbor Freight collection of cotter pins and "o"-rings too just because... (I lived 14 miles from a gallon of milk and 22 miles from town).

[Eric Wilner]

I had various assortments already, and have been buying others as potential need occurs to me, but didn't have any larger-metric-sizes packs, just M2 (or maybe even smaller) to M6.
Sometime, I gotta take one of the Zerk fittings off the tractor and check its thread so I can order some spares before I need them....
Also, I need to come up with a suitable organizer (or stack of organizers) for nuts, bolts, and general random hardware.

[Rob]

I have a couple of those plastic cabinets with the drawers, maybe 15" wide and 18" tall with lot's of plastic drawers, they are not spendy. A great place for nuts, bolts & washers with what's in it marked on the drawers.
I just looked, they are spendy now! $33 at Amazon or Walmart!