AUSTIN, Texas – All over the country, Americans are streaming into convenience stores and other retailers to purchase lottery tickets for the biggest Powerball jackpot in history, USA Today reports. The pot could reach $1.3 billion by the 10:59 p.m. EST drawing tonight. The odds of winning are still long: 1 in 292 million.

The Powerball jackpot ballooned up to more than $1 billion as no one won the grand prize last Wednesday or Saturday. While no one has taken home the big prize yet, smaller winners collected close to $160 million.

“That just shows the total randomness of Powerball,” said Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery. “At our peak [Saturday night], we were selling more than $1.2 million in Powerball tickets every single minute.”

Despite nearly impossible odds of winning—you’re more likely to have lightning strike you or a shark bite you—many people still believe enough to plunk down the $2 for a ticket. The gigantic jackpot has created havoc of a different sort in some areas, as electronic billboards advertising Powerball weren’t designed to accommodate billion-dollar amounts, especially given that the word “million” is permanently attached to the signs.

Powerball officials had a hand in creating the monster jackpot when they fine-tuned the game’s template last fall to make it more difficult to win the grand prize. This week’s billion-dollar jackpot started out life at a low $40 million in early November. With no grand prize winners, the bundle of cash kept rolling over and over—18 times to be exact—to today’s $1.3 billion. Powerball is available in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.