Follow this train of logic:
1.Difficulty goes up because blocks are being produced at a rate greater than 1 every ten minutes.
2.Blocks are mined at a slower rate at a higher difficulty with the same hash rate
3. So confirmations will take a little longer right around the same time a lot of blocks are filling up.
This might be a very opportune time for a spam attack. That combined with blocksize deadlock and the Fed possibly raising interest rates for the first time in seven years means the next 24 hours are critical.