DES MOINES, Iowa — Strong weekend Mega Millions ticket sales easily could push Tuesday’s jackpot above last year’s record $656 million prize, a lottery official said Sunday.

And apparently Butler County residents are getting in on the lottery fever.

Ashley Heckert, a cashier at the A-Plus Sunoco on West Jefferson Street, Butler, said she has seen a big increase in lottery ticket sales because of the Megaball.

“It’s been crazy,” she said Saturday. “Our customers have risen a lot in the past couple days.”

Heckert is expecting even more sales leading up to Tuesday’s even bigger jackpot.

“I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like until Tuesday, she said.

Heckert acknowledged that one of those buyers will likely be herself.

“I’ll probably buy one or two,” she joked.

No ticket on Friday matched the six number needed to win the $425 million prize. It was raised Saturday to $550 million for Tuesday’s drawing, the fourth largest in U.S. history.

However, Paula Otto, executive director of the Virginia Lottery and Mega Millions’ lead director, said that sales were up by as much as 20 percent in states that reported their weekend numbers. Sales were expected to spike on Tuesday, the day of the drawing.

“I think we’ll be very close to the record, and maybe even surpass it,” Otto said. “The challenging part in predicting is that so many of the sales happening on the day of the drawing.

“But lotto players are procrastinators. They tend to buy on the day of the draw.”

However, there has been a strong demand in Butler County for lottery tickets before the Tuesday deadline.

The Kwik Fill convenience store on Route 8 in Center Township had lottery ticket sales in excess of $1,200 on Friday, well above the average sales.

On Saturday morning, the store sold about 100 tickets an hour.

The Country Corners Store in Brady Township also reported an increase in ticket sales due to the Mega Millions jackpot.

Donna Kesler, the manager at the Get-Go on North Main Street, said Saturday that she has seen a large increase in ticket sales, but not only because of the Megaball.

“We’ve seen a lot of customers because of Christmas,” she said. “Lottery tickets make great stocking stuffers.”

As of Friday, players had bought enough tickets to cover roughly half of the 259 million possible number combinations, Otto said.

The highest Mega Millions jackpot was $656 million in March 2012, with three winners in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland. The game is played in 43 states, plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This isn’t the first time people have lined up this year for tickets that might win them millions. Powerball, the nation’s other giant lottery, had a $425 million jackpot in August and a $590.5 million prize in May.

But the odds of winning are, to put it mildly, slim.

On Oct. 19, Mega Millions announced “game enhancements” that would result in a “larger, faster-growing jackpot.” Jackpots have indeed grown, but now players pick six numbers from 1 to 75 instead of the previous 1 to 56.

The result: greater odds against them. Before the changes, the chance of winning the jackpot was 1 in 176 million. Now it’s 1 in 259 million.

Eagle staff writers Will DeShong and John Bojarski contributed to this report.