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| Saturday's Powerball jackpot climbs to $317 million |
The Powerball jackpot that will potentially be won on Saturday is expected to be $317 million. It’s the fourth time in 2013 that the tally has been above $300 million.
One month after the "Ocean's 16" claimed their Powerball prize, the multistate jackpot is back above $300 million.
With no winners in Wednesday's drawing, the payoff soared to an estimated $317 million one day before the Saturday numbers are selected.
It marked the fourth time in 2013 that the life-changing payoff broke the $300 million level. And it was the fastest Powerball jackpot payoff to reach $300 million since the lottery game launched in 1992.
It took just 10 "rollovers" for the jackpot to climb to its current level.
Last month, 16 workers from a county maintenance garage at the Jersey Shore shared one-third of a $448 million jackpot.
A 76-year-old Jersey guy, Mario Scarnici, held one of the two other winning tickets — with a suburban Minneapolis man emerging as the lucky third winner.
Each took the cash option for a one-time payout of about $62 million after taxes.
The cash payout for the Saturday drawing currently stands at $176.3 million. The odds of winning the instant fortune with a single $2 ticket are about 175,000,000-to-1.
The big-bucks drawing continues a recent trend of huge Powerball payouts. The prize hit $590.5 million in May and $587.5 million in November 2012.
