Powerball Jackpot Climbs To $60 Million As July 26 Numbers Yield No Winner

The Powerball jackpot rises to $60 million for Wednesdays drawing after the numbers that came up Saturday, July 26, failed to produce a big winner for the third consecutive drawing. One ticket in Texas hit the first five numbers, but not the Power Ball, which wins the nationwide lottery game’s $1 million second-prize.

The 12,465,267 Powerball tickets sold made for the 11th time in 2014 that sales figures have come in under the 13 million mark. Nontheless, with sales taking place in 43 states plus Washington.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Powerball sales totals for the year are closing in on 1.1 billion after 60 drawings so far.

There were 14 tickets good for the Powerball third-prize, which is $10,000, though five of those ticket buyers paid $3 instead the regular $2 for a Powerball ticket, thus activating the Power Play option.

With a Power Play number of 2, those five tickets can claim winnings of $20,000 each. And in California where under the state’s pari-mutuel payout system for all prizes other than the jackpot and the minimum prizes, those third-prize winners — who matched four of the first five numbers as well as the single Power Ball number — can collect $17,561 each.

All in all, the July 26 Powerball drawing produced 368,800 winning tickets with a total of $3,265,880 in prize money eligible to be collected.

Also on Saturday, a man in suburban Chicago collected his million-dollar payout for a ticket he bought on July 4.

Dan Hoffman said he was hosting a cookout at his home — hen he ran out of burgers.

“A lot more people showed up than I was expecting,” he said. So he made a run to the Jewel-Osco grocery store and picked up hamburger meat, and a Quick Pick Powerball ticket. And what do you know — when he checked the numbers a few days later, he was a millionaire.

“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it and I don’t think I slept at all that night,” Hoffman said. “I can’t believe I won a million dollars because we ran out of hamburgers.”

Even if you didn’t run out of hamburgers, you may still have won something in the July 26 Powerball drawing. Check your numbers against the following sequence, drawn at 10:59 pm in Tallahassee, Florida:

24 — 28 — 30 — 38 — 39 Powerball 16

The cash value of Wednesday’s jackpot — that is, the amount of the jackpot if a winner wants it in a single payment — is estimated at $36.3 million.