Jason Simpson left News 19 in October 2021.
Jason Simpson is WHNT News 19’s Chief Meteorologist. He joined our team in January 2012.
Before joining WHNT News 19 in 2012, Jason served as the morning meteorologist at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, working alongside longtime Chief Meteorologist James Spann from 2004 to 2011. He actually began his career while still in college working part-time at WTOK-TV in Meridian, Mississippi. After college, he worked at WTOK-TV and ABC 17 (KMIZ) in Columbia, Missouri.
Jason was awarded the American Meteorological Society’s Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal for excellence in television weather in 2007. Simpson graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in Broadcast Meteorology. He has been awarded Associated Press Best Weathercaster in Alabama, has been nominated for five Emmys and won an Emmy in 2013.
Jason has covered many weather events from hurricanes to tornadoes and blizzards. Jason was on the air April 27, 2011 and saw firsthand the magnitude of the destruction in different parts of Alabama. After the storm he took action, volunteering in devastated areas to help people rebuild and where he couldn’t go, he sent supplies.
Jason and his wife Lacey have three beautiful children: Walt (born in 2011) and Shelby (born in 2013), and Brody (born in 2015). Brody’s birth changed a lot about Jason and Lacey’s lives; a severe congenital heart defect nearly took his life in the first few hours. Expert hands at Children’s of Alabama saved his life, and the Simpson family along with three other ‘heart families’ from North Alabama now host a fishing tournament in Scottsboro each year to raise money for the Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center of Alabama at Children’s of Alabama. Through 2018, they had raised over $400,000 for the heart center.
Jason is also staunch advocate for science education in the classroom, Jason was instrumental in building curriculum for elementary and middle school science classes through the “ABC’s of Weather” series that he produced for the Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative. He also does numerous school visits and conducts homeschooling class sessions throughout the year.
