What's going on with the Lion's Arch instance?

I'm usually comfortably under-100 when it comes to ping (I'm in the US, characters created on the JQ server), but today the ping is 2000-3000 - in Lion's Arch instance only, as far as I've noticed so far.

All the other zones I've been too (PvE and WvW) are working fine, it's just Lion's Arch. Trying to log into the game with a character left in that zone often results in "client lost connection" or whatever the message is after a really long loading screen period (oddly enough, I can often hear the ambient NPCs talking through the "Loading" screen!). When I can finally log in, it takes literal minutes for a WP click to work - assuming the game doesn't lag out and/or crash in the meantime.

Is anybody else similarly affected?