we have had a lot of increases in the hashrate too in the past week or two (perhaps partly inspired by cardinals/inscriptions, but also just seemingly that hashrate is just constantly going up.. "
My guess is the hashrate went up because Bitcoin's price went up. That may have been enough to make some miners turn on their hardware again (assuming they turned it off the moment it didn't produce enough to pay for it's electricity consumption).
That 11% increase in hashrate is going to lead to 11% less blocks. Considering the full blocks, I expect fees to go up a bit tomorrow.