Double dose of lottery fever grips Northern Seacoast

Lottery players will get a pair of chances in the next two days to ring in the new year with what you might call a windfall.

Tonight's Mega Millions jackpot is expected to approach $343 million while, Wednesday's Powerball grand prize will reach $440 million.

Tonight's Mega Millions jackpot will be the 13^th largest grand prize in the game's history.

The game is played in 44 states, including New Hampshire and Maine; the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

A clerk at the Milton Road Shell said on Saturday that sales on both games "were crazy" so it's likely it'll be even crazier today and tomorrow as folks look to make the new year a prosperous one indeed.

The last time someone took home the Mega Millions jackpot was Oct. 31, when two winners split a $43 million jackpot.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are pretty slim at one in 302.6 million, while winning the Powerball jackpot is far more likely, at one in 292.2 million.

A clerk at the White Mountain Highway Cumberland Farms said today they'd sold a lot of both Mega Millions and Powerball tickets over the long weekend, adding that Powerball tickets sales had been extremely strong.