The soaring Powerball jackpot isn't just breaking records. It's breaking signs.
Throughout the country, many of the billboards and electronic displays advertising the 23-year-old lottery game are only equipped to display three-digit awards. Now that the jackpot has swelled to a world-record $1.4 billion, those signs are stuck at the largest number they can display: a paltry $999 million.
Lottery officials have noted the problem as Powerball fever spreads — and the jackpot continues to expand.
"We've never experienced a jackpot of this size and our signage wasn't designed to exceed three digits," Charlie McIntyre, executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery Commission, said recently.
