Ok..here's the problem-

Over the past year or so, I have noticed that the interaction between my car and its electric cooling fans has been somewhat shaky. Originally, the car operated normally, rarely having to engage the secondary fan (actually, I cant ever remember it coming on except for recently), however now the story is slightly different. Up until today, it had been engaging the secondary fan a lot more, seemingly because the primary was taking longer to engage than it used to. Then today we had another problem- I was driving along at around 40-45 mph when I noticed my temperature gauge going up very rapidly. It finally topped out buried deep into the red area around 260+ degrees. Then, just about as rapidly, it returned back to its original reading of closer to 220. So, I pull over tonight to check exactly whats up, and I find after waiting and letting the engine do its thing that the temp gauge went up fairly high (not the red area, but very close), and then BOTH fans came on (not the primary first...it waited)..and once the temperature dropped the secondary fan shut off. Can ANYONE explain whats going on with my car??