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Here's a chart for a quick visualisation:

http://www.energyonline.com/Data/GenericData.aspx?DataId=4

Also such bumps do happen somewhat regularly (which is concerning), but this one was by far the largest recently:

$9k is fairly artificial in that it comes from the $9k ERCOT ORDC (operations reserves demand curve) meaning they did a study awhile back looking at Texas GDP and the cost of lost load and judge it to be ~$9k per MWh. This means when the optimization software has a shortage of their operating reserves the prices jump up to that level.

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