Why are transactions taking so much longer in the last few days (2017-10-29) I noticed that in recent blocks there has been lots of transactions that has been waiting for as many as 3 days. 

For example, just randomly picking a block 492200, which was produced on 2017-10-29 12:04:50, there are transactions that date back to 2017-10-26 17:32:41

However, when I looked at blocks just two weeks ago, there weren't any transaction that were waiting for so long. Again randomly picking an example block 490200, produced on 2017-10-16 20:54:59, the earliest transaction in that block I could find was sent out on 2017-10-16 13:02:04. 

So what has happened to the block chain in the past two weeks (except for the Bitcoin Gold fork, but I don't see how that relates to this)?

Note: I am not asking about how to solve unconfirmed transactions. I am just simply curious what is causing this to happen as block times and network hash power doesn't seem to have changed much.

Another example: Transaction is stuck and unspent 2days+
So what has happened to the block chain 


Some miners moved their hashpower to Bictoin Cash blockchain because it was more profitable for a while. https://cash.coin.dance/blocks

This resulted less hash power on bitcoin main chain and larger intervals between blocks.