It was known as the Smithfield tornado. During all his years in severe weather work, he was awarded not only a U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal but also the Silver Medal.

When growing up in West Alabama's Hale County (Havana Junction!) he always wanted to be a weatherman, newspaper reporter, radio broadcaster or photographer. His career in meteorology has included all of that. He was one of the persons that handled the NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts from the Weather Service. He was responsible for thousands of weather stories, warnings and special feature items over the years.

As a kid, he built a small radio "studio" in the corner of his bedroom and practiced doing newscasts, and of course weather, with a wooden "microphone." His main source of news was a day-old Birmingham Age-Herald, The Tuscaloosa News, The Greensboro Watchman and jotting down items he heard on WJRD Radio, Tuscaloosa. He also printed a two page weekly newspaper, "Hometown News" by hand and mailed a copy to relatives in Worcester, Massachusetts and charged them five cents. It cost three cents to mail it!.

Of course weather was often the main headline.

He ordered a $4 plastic rain guage from a catalog. His parents bought him a 29-cent thermometer and a 5-cent notebook. He started keeping weather records and was hooked. At Akron High School, one of his teachers, W.W. Duncan, was very interested in weather. He encouraged J.B. to follow that and gave him an assignment to brief the science class once a week on all of the new developments in weather.

During his NWS career, J.B. was very active in photography and the duty of photographing storm damage sort of defaulted to him. In fact, for several years it was his responsibility to do storm surveys and determine the "F" rating of a tornado, path length, width, fatalities and injuries for the official NWS publication, Storm Data. The Super Outbreak in 1974 was an enormous task.

J.B. retired from the NWS in 1989. A few years later, he came out of retirement to team up with James Spann in publishing a daily WeatherFax. He and James had met years earlier at the NWS Office at 11 West Oxmoor Road and became instant friends--especially since both were extremely interested in severe weather. James was Chief Meteorologist at Channel 13 at the time.

Today, J.B. is a part of The Weather Company and a team that does forecasting and writing for the James Spann Forecast Fax, the E-Forecast, the ABC 33/40 web site, and the rapidly growing weather blog.

During times of severe weather, you can also hear J.B. on Cox Radio stations in Birmingham, WBHK, WBHJ and WAGG. This includes continuous "wall-to-wall" coverage when there is a tornado warning.