Uptick in SPAM emails

From the FWIW department... Over the past week or so I have noticed an uptick in SPAM emails arriving in my Outlook 2010 Junk mail folder. They are coming in blocks of five or six at a time very early in the morning, no other times. Weird to say the least. I do have the spam blocker settings to delete spam and report the messages as SPAM in the webmail interface but they are still getting through. Its strange because I have not received any spam of any kind for a very very long time, ie. probably a year or so, then all of a sudden its starting again...