The band had gone long, is my guess.
When I was lil' AM dx'er, Tomas Hood of "73 Magazine" had a bit of advice for us that's served me well over the decades, turn the radio's ferrite core in the opposite direction of your listening direction. If you're a roughly east-west dx'er, turn that radio to N-S position when the MW band is acting funny, and have your Spanish and Portuguese dictionaries ready.