HOLLY - It was a still night on the plains. The sky had darkened, and it looked like rain. There were warnings of thunderstorms.

People in Holly were watching TV, helping their children with homework and relaxing after dinner.

In the sky above their homes, a fateful collision of moist and dry air was about to change Holly forever. National Weather Service trackers in Pueblo had issued a severe weather warning for the area, but they thought the wind and thunderstorms were moving east out of Colorado.

Then, suddenly, the wind doubled back toward Holly and a tornado was born.

"The wind at the ground level just switched around," said NWS meteorologist Tom Magnuson. "That's an unusual thing to happen."

At 7:57 p.m., a Prowers County dispatcher phoned the weather service to report a tornado had been spotted a mile south of Holly.

Less than a minute later, the tornado swept into town.

A bitter wind

In a double-wide trailer just off Santa Fe Street, the Rosales family - Gustavo Puga, 28; Rosemary Rosales, 28; and their daughter, Noelia, 3 - had finished dinner.

Rosemary stood in the kitchen, while Noelia slept on the sofa. When the tornado approached, a violent torrent of wind swept through their home. Puga grabbed his young daughter off the sofa and raced into the kitchen to hold onto Rosemary. In an instant, the roof was sucked off the mobile home and carried a block away. Rosemary and Noelia were flung into a backyard tree. Puga was hurtled to the ground.

Badly injured, the young father frantically began searching for Rosemary and Noelia, screaming for help. Two neighbors rushed to his side, and they noticed that Noelia was in the lower branches of the tree. Further up, they saw a bleeding Rosemary, who had severe head injuries.

As they brought mother and daughter down from the tree, an ambulance arrived. The family was taken to a hospital in Lamar and eventually airlifted to Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs.

Doctors there desperately tried to save Rosemary, but after four hours they moved her to a room in intensive care so she could be with family members before she died.

Gustavo Puga and Noelia were both hospitalized but are expected to recover. Their son, Gustavo Jr., 7, was with his grandmother Wednesday night and was not hurt.

Even though Rosemary and Gustavo had lived together for years as husband and wife, they had never formally married and had planned to have a wedding ceremony soon.

Rosemary's sister, Victoria Rosales, said Puga told his unconscious wife over and over again, "You've got to wake up, I was going to marry you."

Rosemary Rosales was the first person in 46 years to be killed by a tornado in Colorado.

Saved by CSAP

Randy Weigum, the principal of Shanner Grade School, was still at work at 8 p.m., going over material from recent CSAP exams. Ordinarily Weigum would have been home by that time.

By a stroke of luck none of the Weigum family members were inside their home when the tornado obliterated it, though on any other night they would have been.

Wife Cindy was driving home from an afternoon doctor appointment in Denver. Daughter Jessie, 16, was at a youth group meeting, and daughter Crystal, 18, was in Fort Collins where she attends Colorado State University.

"God took care of us," Randy Weigum said. "We should have been home."

An empty cinder block foundation, an overturned boat and a debris-covered field is all that is left of the Weigum home.

The tornado ripped the home from its base, and the I-beams carved foot-deep trenches along the ground before the wind lifted them into the air. A 60-foot I-beam that Randy Weigum believes came from his home was found nearly two miles away at a friend's farm.

Finding what was gone

As the sun rose Thursday morning, the people of Holly discovered exactly what was lost.

Bill Lowe, 77, lives on the eastern edge of Holly and has run cattle in the area for 35 years. He was up at 6 a.m. Thursday and immediately headed out to see how his 700 cattle had fared.

He knew something was wrong when he discovered them grazing in a field of green alfalfa, which is lethal to cattle. Dozens of them were dead, and many were injured and in great pain. Some had been impaled by two-by-fours, and many of the animals had wide gashes in their flanks and others hobbled around on broken legs.

The suffering cattle had to be put down, and Lowe began the grim task of shooting them. He aimed a .22-caliber rifle at the head of a six-week old calf whose leg was broken in two places.

"She's been through hell," said Lowe as he aimed. "Dang, I hate this."

Lowe estimates he lost 40 animals.

For Lowe, it was the last straw. He had already suffered $300,000 in damages from the December blizzard and he estimates the tornado will cost him $400,000.

He plans to sell his land and equipment.

"We're quitting, we're selling out," he said. "We've had it to the core."

By 8 a.m. Friday, there was a grisly pyre on Lowe's land, where the bodies of dead cattle were burned in a heap.

Looking for home

On Friday, the Weigums sifted through the remains of their home, managing to salvage a few items. Using a metal detector and a front-end loader, they discovered small pieces of their lives.

Cindy Weigum found the ring her daughters gave her as a Christmas gift.

"Take everything you have and run it through a blender, and then sort through it," Randy Weigum said, trying to describe the scene.

Weigum was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of brown boots and the pants he wore to work Wednesday - the only clothes he has.

A great mom

Rosemary Rosales' son, Gus, was in kindergarten teacher Dwana Salisbury's class last year. There were only 25 students in the entire grade. All of them were in her class.

Rosales was a great parent and helped out in the classroom, Salisbury said.

"She signed up for all of the parent activities," Salisbury said, her voice cracking. "She wanted the best for her children and more education than she had."

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