Lotto Fever: Two jackpots worth combined $500 million
Lottery jackpots combined worth nearly $500 million. Powerball drawing is Wednesday night.
After rolling over for months, this week's lottery jackpots have reached nearly $500 million combined.
The jackpot for Wednesday night's Powerball drawing stands at $269 million for the annuity, or $171.3 million for the cash option. The pot has been rolling over since someone claimed a $191 million prize on Oct. 25. Since then, no one has matched all five white balls and the Powerball.
If you can't come up with the Powerball's winning numbers (the odds of winning are 292.2 million one) there's always Friday's Mega Millions jackpot, which has climbed to $247 million after no ticket matched all six numbers in Tuesday's drawing. The cash option is worth $155.2 million. The odds of winning are one in 258.9 million, slightly better than the Powerball.
This is only the the third time in the past two years that the Mega Millions jackpot has been over the $200 million mark, lottery officials say. The jackpot was last won on Oct. 13 when winning ticket holders in Michigan and Rhode Island shared a $42 million jackpot.
The jackpots pale in comparison to the record-setting $1.6 billion Powerball prize won in January 2016. That pot was split by three winning tickets, which were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee.