Powerball: 1 rollover away from history?

Powerball is again flirting with history.

One more rollover might bring the biggest jackpot ever.

Two more and, well, we could find out if the billion-dollar payday is just a wild dream.

Here's the deal. The jackpot is up $350 million, because no one won the whole shebang Saturday night. (Numbers: 6, 13, 19, 23 and 43, with a Powerball of 16.)

It's not unprecedented - it's "only" the seventh biggest jackpot in U.S. lottery history.

See "Biggest lottery jackpots in U.S. history."

But only two jackpots worth $325 million or more have ever rolled over, and both obliterated the half-billion-dollar mark.

Last November, Powerball's jackpot was smaller than the current one - $325 million - but rolled over and exploded, soaring to $587.5 million.

And that was without California, which joined Powerball last month.

Credit California with making the current jackpot perhaps the fastest-growing ever. It took only a dozen drawings to cross $300 million. The November jackpot took 14 — an extra week.

The biggest jackpot ever also happened last year, in late March, when no one hit Mega Millions' $356 million top prize, which is just a bit larger than Powerball is now.

When the smoke cleared, the pot was $656 million for the annuity. The three winners split the $471 million cash.

That jackpot took 17 weeks to cross $300 million.

Mega Millions could be the biggest impediment to a new record, because it's offering its own whopper of a jackpot — $154 million — for just $1 a ticket. Powerball tickets cost $2 each.

The Mega Millions numbers drawn Friday night: 1, 19, 20, 39 and 49, with a Mega Ball of 28.

The odds are terrible, of course: 1 chance in about 175 million of hitting either jackpot with a single ticket.