MN meteorologist Eric Ahasic tops $100K in his fourth ‘Jeopardy!’ appearance

Ross Raihala, Pioneer Press
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Minneapolis meteorologist Eric Ahasic kept his “Jeopardy!” hot streak going Thursday with his $30,200 win fueling his four-day total of $105,801.

With a nod to Ahasic’s cat Tato, host Mayim Bialik gave him an extended introduction: “Our champion Eric Ahasic may consider himself a cat man, but when it comes to hunting down the Daily Doubles, he seems to align more with a Labrador Retriever. In his first three games, he has tracked down eight of the nine available Daily Doubles and responded correctly to six of them. It’s an impressive skill that I’m sure he is hoping to continue to hone in today’s game.”

And, well, he did just that. Too bad for his competitors, a middle school teacher from Washington, D.C., and a lawyer from Randolph, N.J.

Ahasic found the first round’s Daily Double on his third turn and correctly responded to an answer about the Phoenicians. He made it a true Daily Double for $2,800 and grabbed an early lead that he kept throughout the game.

With each of his four episodes this week – “Jeopardy!” tapes five per day – Ahasic has become increasingly comfortable on camera and displays an array of facial expressions while pondering his responses. He’s also proved to have a broad range of knowledge across a variety of topics. (“You don’t have to know everything,” he told the Pioneer Press in an interview that ran prior his first appearance. “You just have to know a little bit about everything.”)

Bialik asked Ahasic if he always knew he wanted to be a meteorologist, and he said “like a surprising number of meteorologists, I have an origin story. When I was 6 years old, growing up in Illinois, we had a tornado go through our town. Ever since that day, I’ve been fascinated by the wonder of nature.”

The first round wrapped with Ahasic at $8,400, trailed by his fellow players at $3,800 and $3,200.

Yet again, Ahasic found and won both Daily Doubles in the second round. The first, a true Daily Double, saw his total jump to $17,600 after he correctly identified Scotland as the home to the waterfall Corra Linn, which is part of the Falls of Clyde. He took a more conservative approach with the second, wagering $5,000 for his correct question about composer Gustav Holst.

When Final Jeopardy! rolled around, Ahasic was sitting pretty with $32,600, more than double the combined competition at $10,400 and $5,800. The topic was children’s literature: “First published in French in 1943, this book has been called the most translated non-religious work, rendered into more than 300 languages.” While Ahasic was the only one of three to incorrectly respond with “Goodnight Moon” rather than “The Little Prince,” he only lost a small wager of $2,400.

A meteorologist at the Chanhassen office of the National Weather Service, the 32-year-old Ahasic has been a fan of “Jeopardy!” since he was a teen and finally landed on the show after applying annually for 15 years. His fifth episode airs at 4:30 p.m. Friday on KARE 11.

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