what are the chances that, with absolutely no negative change in hashrate, we deviated as much as 1+ hour-long block interval away from the average of 10 minutes? Wouldn't it be more likely that there was indeed a temporarily decrease in hashrate which then caused this big gap? Probabilities aside.
it's impossible to know! but let's put it another way: 45-60 minute block intervals happen fairly frequently (more than once when I've been demonstrating Bitcoin to a newbie, and as well when I've been paying for something in person!)
meanwhile, difficulty adjusted yesterday. Did the the difficulty drop?
Not sure what that has to do with a single day drop in nethash. If we had >114 blocks on the 23rd the difficulty would have increased more yesterday.
that's correct, the difficulty increased despite the alleged hashrate drop.
next question:
is any hashrate drop in any way meaningful if the difficulty increased at the next adjustment?
(I'm going to give you a clue, the answer begins with the letter "n", ends in "o", and is not "nintendo")