3 winners hit $1.6b US lottery jackpot

Three winning tickets shared a $1.6-billion bonanza in the US Powerball lottery on Wednesday, after millions of people tuned in to see the fate of the world-record jackpot live on TV.

The winning numbers were 4, 8, 19, 27 and 34, with a 10 as the so-called Powerball number.

Lottery fever gripped the United States, with people forming long lines outside stores to buy a ticket and then frantically checking their $2 slips to see if they had hit the mammoth jackpot.

"It's official! There were 3 jackpot-winning tickets in tonight's Powerball draw: California, Florida & Tennessee," California Lottery tweeted.

Local television showed swarms of people, many cheering and chanting, descending on the Los Angeles convenience store where the California ticket was sold.

The jackpot, which had stood at $1.5 billion for much of the day, eventually crept up to nearly $1.59 billion.

The winner can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual installments for 29 years or take a one-off payment of at least $930 million.

The odds of winning were at least one in 292 million.

The previous US jackpot record of $656 million, on March 30, 2012, was scooped up by three winners from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas. The world's richest lottery is Spain's annual Christmas "El Gordo," which in 2015 handed out 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) but which capped individual wins at 400,000 euros and handed out thousands of smaller prizes.