In relation to this, I was searching Google yesterday and I got Mahalo results for stuff I never would have gotten before (I think it was a Mahalo answers result but not sure). Found it interesting but not unusual at the time. The Mahalo result was the third or fourth result from the top.
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It would be interesting to look at the referrers to see if they mostly came from google.com.

If they did one thought I have is out the dates on the sitemap. Google loves having the most recent content, if for instance the dates on the sitemap for the individual pages reflected the date of the creation of the sitemap instead of the date of the creation of the pages, google would see all the content as brandnew and give it priority. At least untill it realized that the content was not all new, which could explain why the traffic went back down. 

I can't be sure that is the case, but its an thought.
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In my experience, no. Submitting a site map will not result in a spike of traffic.

However, I don't run a news portal like Mahalo.com.

I think that Siliconskater hit it on the head mentioning that Mahalo may have been quickly indexed and after running through the algorithms has fallen off or been categorized correctly. I have experienced this myself when I've put large amounts of data online all at one time. Traffic goes up, gets sorted, goes down.

The real key to uncovering an answer to this question will come from your analytics. Combining those specific results with the timing of what was going on in development and on the site itself could lead to a concrete answer.

If the sitemap was the only thing that changed, then it must have been the source of the spike.

I might also have a quick look at how many new members registered before and after the spike / downtime.  If some of your marketing efforts suddenly took effect, then the registration process and natural traffic could be to blame.
Source(s):
I'm an I.T. pro with specific experience solving the problems of traffic intensive sites.

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