Check your tickets—tonight's winning Powerball numbers for the $550 million jackpot are: 5 16 22 23 29 and the powerball is 6.
Scratch that: The ticket buying frenzy pushed up the winnings. The winner stands to net $579.9 million (before taxes) paid out in annual installments over 29 years or a nothing-to-sniff-at lump sum payment of more than $360 million.
It took 16 straight Powerball draws without a winner to get to this point, and lottery hopefuls turned out in droves to test their their luck. Lottery ticket outlets were selling more than 130,000 tickets nationwide a minute at one point Wednesday.
One winning ticket, in Missouri, was identified on the Powerball homepage.
But don't throw away your tickets just because you didn't hit all of the numbers. Prizes range from $4 to $1 million for matching different combinations of numbers.
