If you’re someone who only plays the lottery when the jackpot is REALLY big, now’s your time to shine. Tonight’s Powerball drawing is worth an estimated $1 BILLION. (Only five states don’t do the Powerball: Nevada, Utah, Alabama, Hawaii, and Alaska.) No one’s hit the jackpot since August 3rd, when somebody in Pennsylvania won $207 million. There have been 37 drawings since then, and nobody’s won.
$1 billion makes it the second-largest Powerball jackpot in history. The $1.59 billion that three people split in 2016 is still #1. (There was also a $1.3 billion jackpot this past July, but that was the Mega Millions.) If you’re looking for some lucky numbers, you could use birthdays, or just keep it random. But THIS set of digits seems pretty lucky right now. New York has a “Take 5” lottery it does twice a day, a mid-day drawing, and an evening drawing. And last Thursday, the same set of numbers hit BOTH TIMES. That’s only five numbers, and the Powerball has six. So you’ll have to come up with the last one on your own.
Here’s how crazy that is . . .
The odds of hitting the Powerball tonight with all six numbers are 1 in 292 million. The odds of those five numbers hitting twice in a row were 1 in 331 BILLION.
A lottery official confirmed it really did happen though, and said there wasn’t any foul play. Quote, “The numbers were properly vetted and verified on site.”
Here are the five lucky numbers that were drawn, followed by the numbers that have been the most drawn in Powerball history.
18
21
30
35
36
SAN ANSELMO, CA – JANUARY 03: Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets are displayed on January 3, 2018 in San Anselmo, California. The Powerball jackpot and Mega Millions jackpots are both over $400 million at the same time for the first time. The Mega Millions $418 million jackpot would be the fourth largest and the $460 million Powerball jackpot would be the seventh largest in the game’s history. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
