Phila. woman wins $1 million thanks to snowstorm

Call it the tale of Powerball and the power outage.

Details from the Pennsylvania Lottery are sketchy, but apparently a Mary McFadden of Philadelphia won $1 million because of the major snowstorm of Feb. 9-10, which added more than a foot of snow to the nearly two feet from the previous weekend.

When electricity went out at the house of her daughter and son-in-law, they headed over.

On their way, they apparently got stuck for a while, then decided to stop for gas at a Lukoil.

While there, they picked up a couple of Powerball tickets for Mary.

One matched the first five numbers drawn Feb. 10 but not the Powerball. Normally that means $200,000, but they also bought the Power Play option, which automatically boosted the win to $1 million.

No word on how that might get divvied up - except that 25 percent gets withheld for Uncle Sam.

Last night's Powerball drawing. The annuity jackpot for Saturday's drawing grew to $139 million, because no one hit all the numbers drawn last night.

A North Carolina ticket won $1 million the same way Mary McFadden did, by having the Power Play along with the first five numbers - in this case 7, 9, 14, 45 and 49 - but not the Powerball, which was 23.

A New Jersey ticket was one of five that won $200,000 each for matching just the first five numbers. The others were sold in Kansas, Missouri, Oregon and Texas.

Powerball is played in 41 states, including Delaware.

The other major multistate lottery, Mega Millions, has a $134 million jackpot Friday night. The game is played in 33 states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

For more lottery information, go to www.philly.com/philly/news/lottery, www.powerball.com and www.megamillions.com.