With temperatures slated to drop down to the low 20s this evening (with some areas dropping into the upper teens), now may be a good time to check on your pipes before heading off to bed (or doing more work and forgetting to do it).

Incidentally, metro Birmingham area is under a hard freeze warning until 8 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday) morning; we’ll also be under a fire weather advisory from 12 – 8 p.m.

There’s a never ending supply of tips available for review to help prepare the house for the overnight hard freeze. Here are some tips to prevent frozen pipes from State Farm’s website; here’s another list courtesy of eHow.

If you don’t stumble across this until Tuesday morning and you’ve realized that your pipes are frozen, you may want to check out these tips on how to thaw them out.

Photo: Frozen Pipe. Sterlic/Flickr