Powerball jackpot surges to $500M in hours before drawing

At one point Wednesday morning, the Pennsylvania Lottery says that tickets were being sold at almost 4,200 per minute.

The drawing for the victor will be held Wednesday at 10 p.m. The Texas Lottery announced that if no one wins Wednesday night, Saturday’s jackpot will be $675 million.

Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, Washington D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, the odds of winning the top jackpot went from 1 in 175.2 million to 1 in 292.2 million.

Previously, players chose five numbers out of 59, but Powerball made a switch in October, so that players now choose five numbers from 69 numbers. None of those were in Kansas.

In the past 13 years, 16 Powerball jackpot winners have bought their tickets in Pennsylvania, more than any other state.

The husband and wife say they rarely play the lottery, but a big jackpot got their attention. However, that was far smaller than last year’s biggest jackpots of $564.1 million in February and $310.5 million in September.

If there is a winning ticket and the holder takes the money in cash, the total will amount to more than $300 million.

Odds are that there will be a million-dollar victor in this week’s Powerball lottery who will never know they won.

The jackpot is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. For some comparison, your chance of being struck by lightning in a year is about one in 960,000.

Winners are advised to sign the lottery ticket as soon as they get the chance.

“You can’t win if you don’t play”, said Jennifer Johnson.

After 18 draws since early November, the Powerball Jackpot surged to 500-million dollars on Wednesday.

About 70 percent of past winners used Quick Picks, the computer system that spits out numbers, according to the official Powerball website.