Brisk ticket sales helped the biggest Powerball jackpot in history continue to grow.
The Powerball numbers are: 5 - 16 - 22 - 23 - 29, and the Powerball is 6.
Wednesday's jackpot was raised Wednesday morning to an estimated $550 million with a cash value option of $360.2 million.
The estimated jackpot is expected to be the second-largest lottery jackpot in the world. The numbers are an estimate and could go up again before the drawing.
Lottery players had until just before 9 p.m. to purchase tickets, and Powerball officials say they now believe there is a 75 percent chance a winning combination of numbers will be drawn Wednesday night.
In Texas, cumulative Powerball draw sales for Wednesday through the 8 p.m. hour are $27,542,598. That's 1,344 percent more than sales last Wednesday at the same time.
In three measured regional areas of Dallas and Fort Worth, more than 3 million tickets were sold by noon on Wednesday. Sales in the Houston area were above 3 million as well.
"Texas has had numerous Powerball second-tier winners of $1 million and $2 million, but we have never had a Powerball jackpot winner," said Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery. "Since everything is bigger in Texas, we hope that it will be a Texan that will win this enormous jackpot."
This jackpot started as a $40 million prize on Oct. 6 and is the result of 15 draws without a jackpot winner.
If no one wins on Wednesday, it could become the largest jackpot in world history, eclipsing the March 2012 Mega Millions jackpot of $656 million.
Cathie Singer always plays the lottery, but when the jackpot reached half a billion dollars, the Watauga resident said her family started calling her to buy tickets for them.
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“My brother-in-law was a firefighter, so he picked all the stations that he was at in California; he's retired now,” she said.
The method of how players decide on which numbers to pick varies.
“ I'm the youngest of 12, so I pick 12. I use birthdays -- my son’s, my husband’s birthdays,” Singer said.
“It was birthdays. I did birthdays on this one, and then I did all the kids ages on another one,” said Cigi Wilson, of Fort Worth.
But what would you do with $500 million? Most people NBC 5 spoke to talked about buying homes, paying off loans, financing education and giving to charity.
Some of the more extravagant ideas in our newsroom suggested getting a private concert from Elton John for $2 million, buying Munch's famed painting "The Scream" for $120 million, snagging the Hope Diamond for $200 million or even putting in to be the new owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who were valued by Forbes Magazine at $497 million in January.
NBC 5's Omar Villafranca contributed to this report.
