Lining up for chance at $280 million jackpot

RAYNE, Louisiana (CNN) -- Powerball fever spread across the nation Friday as Americans snatched up tickets a day before one of the largest lottery jackpots in history -- an estimated $280 million.

Powerball officials said they sold $42 million in tickets on Thursday, a sales record for a Thursday. By midday Friday, sales had already topped $42 million and were selling at a rate of 100,000 per minute, spokesman Joe Mahoney said.

Saturday's drawing will be held at 10:59 p.m. EDT. The tickets are sold in 21 states and the District of Columbia.

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The jackpot is so large that if the winner were to stack 280 million one-dollar bills on top of each other, he or she would have a stack of money 19 miles high -- or 3 1/2 times as tall as Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

If those dollar bills were lined up end to end, the money would stretch 27,113 miles, more than enough to circle the globe at the equator.

The jackpot could rise to $300 million by the time of the drawing, which would be a Powerball record and the second largest lottery jackpot ever.

The largest state lottery jackpot was $363 million, a Big Game prize won by two ticketholders on May 9, 2000. The largest Powerball payout was $295.7 million, won by a single ticketholder on July 29, 1998.

"If we have a surge in sales on Saturday -- and we'll analyze the sales for the next two days -- it's a possibility that it can exceed or reach $300 million," said Tony Cooper, the president of Powerball Game Group.

Cooper sought to get the message out to Americans "to play for fun."

"We want people to realize that you're supposed to have fun when you play this game," he said.

The winner can choose a cash option, which would be a one-time payment of $162.9 million. If the winner chose annual checks, that would mean $11.2 million per year over the next 25 years.

The chances of winning the jackpot are 80 million to one.

Despite those odds, Americans packed convenience stores to get their hands on the potential winning ticket.

In Rayne, located in the heart of southern Louisiana, about 100 miles from the closest border, hundreds of people packed the Frog City Travel Plaza.

Frog City sold the winning Powerball ticket in December for a $35 million jackpot.

"People are coming here and buying them just because of that," said cashier Mary Dietz. "They're hoping that maybe there'll be a second winner at this store."

"It's pretty crazy. We've been pretty busy all day long," she said.

In Greenwich, Connecticut, the story was different. Powerball sales there were suspended Friday after hours-long lines snaked out doors on Wednesday as people from New York overwhelmed businesses and overextended police. Some residents complained of seeing people urinating in public as they waited in line.

Sales will resume there Saturday morning.

A few miles to the north, in Stamford, businesses said they were getting an increased flow of ticket buyers, what they attributed to the lack of ticket sales in Greenwich.

"We're picking up the Greenwich traffic," said Hector Sherazi, a cashier at the Happy House Variety Store. "More people are coming this way now."

He said they weren't getting "the big lines" Greenwich had. Instead, Sherazi said he's seen a steady flow of about five or six customers throughout the day.

In the Midwest, people flooded to the M&H Convenience Store in Moorhead, Minnesota, across the border from Fargo, North Dakota. The store has been the state's No. 1 Powerball retailer since a $48 million winning jackpot ticket was purchased there four years ago.

"We are swamped," said manager Marcie Felix.

She said they have four clerks working the register and that the lines "at times are 15 deep." "Everybody wants to win," she said.

Powerball tickets are sold in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

Colorado is the newest state in the game, having just joined a few drawings ago.