Parts of central Arizona were engulfed by a towering wall of dust on Monday evening — producing dramatic scenes that sent shockwaves far beyond the Grand Canyon state.

" It was larger and it went through a metropolitan area so it gained a lot of attention," said Mark O'Malley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix.

According to O'Malley, the dust storm — known as a haboob — originated in southern Arizona around 3:30 p.m. local time and reached the city of Phoenix about two hours later.

The storm gradually weakened as it moved through north-central Arizona and in total, lasted about an hour, O'Malley added.

The haboob was accompanied by intense thunderstorms. On Monday evening, more than 39,000 households in Arizona were without power and the bulk of outages were

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