Powerball Rolls On: 2, 21, 24, 25, 64 and a Powerball 7 Push the Jackpot to $298 Million

Tuesday night's Powerball draw kept its cards close, sending nobody home with the big prize but quietly nudging the jackpot into some genuinely fun territory. If you're the type who checks your ticket with one eye half-closed, here's what dropped on September 16.

The winning numbers were 2, 21, 24, 25, 64, with the Powerball landing on 7 and the Power Play multiplier set at 2. That's a tight little cluster in the low-to-mid range with one lone number way out at 64 — the kind of spread that makes you wonder if the machine got bored halfway through and then remembered it had one more ball to drop.

No jackpot winner means the pot keeps climbing, and it's climbing at a pace worth paying attention to. The next drawing is now estimated at $298,000,000, with a cash option of $126,600,000. That's a solid jump from where things stood heading into this draw, when the estimate sat at $271,000,000 (cash option $115,100,000). A few more rollovers like this and we could be looking at a genuinely headline-worthy number sooner rather than later.

Nobody won the whole thing, but somewhere out there, someone matched four numbers and is currently pretending they're not excited.

Even without a jackpot hit, draws like this one are rarely a total shutout. Powerball's prize tiers reward partial matches too, so it's worth actually checking your ticket line by line rather than just glancing at the top row and sighing. Matching the Powerball alone gets you a prize, and stacking a few main numbers on top of that adds up fast — especially with that Power Play multiplier of 2 in play, which can double non-jackpot winnings depending on the tier.

If you're not sure how to methodically go through your numbers without missing something (or panicking unnecessarily), there's a straightforward walkthrough on how to check your lottery numbers that covers exactly this kind of situation — useful for exactly the moment when you've got a ticket in hand and no idea if 24 was one of your numbers or not.

As for what's next: with the jackpot now sitting at $298,000,000 ahead of the following draw, interest is likely to pick up. Jackpots in this range tend to draw in players who normally sit out the smaller pots, so expect the numbers pool to get a little more crowded. That's all the more reason to treat this as what it is — a fun, occasional shot at something big, not a financial plan. Set a budget you're comfortable with, play for the enjoyment of it, and let the numbers fall where they fall.

For the full breakdown of Tuesday's draw and how the prize tiers shook out, the official Powerball site has the complete results and payout structure. And if you want to keep tabs on how this jackpot climb continues from here, our Powerball results page stays updated after every drawing.

So: no big winner this time, a jackpot that's clearly warming up, and a set of numbers — 2, 21, 24, 25, 64, Powerball 7 — that will either mean absolutely nothing to you or everything, depending entirely on what's sitting in your pocket right now. Worth a look either way.