Powerball jackpot grows to whopping $478 million

Guess what's getting a boost this weekend?

Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing produced no winner as the jackpot now gets increased to an estimated $478 million for Saturday's drawing.

The winning numbers for Wednesday's drawing were 10, 47, 50, 65, and 68. The Powerball number is 24.

With the chance of winning the mega-jackpot being so small -- the odds are 292.2 million-to-1 according to experts -- players have better chances of claiming smaller prizes which range from $4 to $1 million.

Though it's been nearly three months since the big prize produced a winner, Powerball has had a huge year, said Iowa Lottery Chief Executive Officer Terry Rich earlier this week. The game’s jackpot reached a world record of nearly $1.6 billion in the drawing on Jan. 13.

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The jackpot, which was set for $422 million on Wednesday, grew for more than two months to reach that amount. During that time frame alone (Nov. 5-Jan. 13), the lottery sold about $34.2 million in Powerball tickets compared to a total of $52.2 million in Powerball sales during the entire previous state fiscal year.

The Powerball sales total for the past 12 months was $74.9 million. The big Powerball prize comes less than three weeks after a player in Indiana won a $536 million Mega Millions jackpot.

Powerball is played in 44 states, but tickets aren't sold in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah.

Contributing: William Petroski andSheldon S. Shafer