Apr 3, 2024 By Brad Hundt 3 min read

Norma Sherwood hasn’t typically purchased lottery tickets.

But when the cook at Wavie and Jane’s Emporium in Connellsville saw that the Powerball jackpot had soared past $1 billion, she decided to make an exception.

“I don’t play the lottery, but I bought a Powerball ticket last night,” Sherwood said Tuesday morning. “I saw on the news last night how much it was worth, and I thought, I’m going to buy a lottery ticket.”

There are undoubtedly a lot of people who are doing the same thing in the 45 states where Powerball tickets are sold, along with Wasington, D.C., the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. When no one drew the six winning numbers Monday – they were 19, 24, 40, 42 and 56, with red Powerball 23 – the jackpot hit an estimated $1.09 billion. If one winner takes the whole caboodle, the jackpot has an estimated cash value of only $527.3 million if the winner takes a lump sum payment.

If someone does win Wednesday or the drawing that follows, they will have company in the ranks of recently minted billionaires. Last week, a $1.1 billion MegaMillions jackpot-winning ticket was sold in New Jersey. The $1.09 Powerball pot is the ninth-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history, and the fourth-largest in Powerball’s history.

Drew Svitko, Powerball’s product group chair and the Pennsylvania Lottery’s executive director, said in a news release, “For lotteries, this is our second consecutive week of being able to offer players an advertised jackpot over $1 billion. If you’re thinking of buying a ticket for Wednesday’s Powerball drawing, please keep in mind, it only takes one ticket to win, and a portion of your ticket sale will stay in your state to support good causes.”

That being said, the odds of winning the whole Powerball jackpot are very, very low – 1 in 292 million. You have a greater chance of being hit by lightning twice in your lifetime (1 in 9 million), of dying in a plane crash (1 in 11 million), of hitting a hole in one (1 in 12,500), or getting hit by a meteor (1 in 250,000).

Last summer, Matthew Kovach, an assistant professor of economics at Virginia Tech, told the Associated Press that lottery tickets are “definitely not good investments” and that they are “not even investments … there’s an expectation that you will always lose money.”

Still, that hasn’t prevented Powerball tickets from being sold at a steady pace at the Medicine Shoppe in Washington, according to employee Amanda Musante.

“It has picked up in the last couple of weeks because of the jackpot,” she said.