As a fierce tornado raced toward Holly on Wednesday, government meteorologists 120 miles away in Pueblo could only see clouds 3 miles up, perhaps missing tell-tale signs of impending destruction.

Holly sits about equidistant from radars in Kansas, Texas and Pueblo, creating a blind spot for what happens near the surface, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tom Magnuson.

John McGinley, a scientist at Boulder's Earth Systems Research Laboratory, says a test project is using inexpensive and widely dispersed radars to erase the blind spots.

"If you had a bunch of cheap radars deployed, you would pick up the rotation very nicely," he said.

But Wednesday's storm formed so fast that even extra radars may not have given much more warning, experts say.

The storm "just blew up," said AccuWeather meteorologist Dave Houk.

The rotation of a super-cell thunderstorm was detected on weather radars at 7:53 p.m. But there is a four-minute delay in delivering the data to computer screens, said Magnuson.

That happened at 7:57 p.m. At the same time, a report of a tornado near Holly was phoned in to an emergency dispatcher, who called the weather bureau, Magnuson said.

The warning was written and sent out at 8:01 p.m. But by then, it was too late.

McGinley, without endorsing any system, said he is interested in research to see if inexpensive radars could help.

"They (would be) put on towers and are meant to fill in these gaps," he said. "They are ultra- cheap radars that would supplement" the more sophisticated radars at large weather centers.