A SEA angler is feared drowned in the North Sea after he vanished from rocks in fierce storms as towns and villagers across parts of Scotland were hit by flooding after a weekend of torrential rain.
The 33-year-old man was last seen fishing off the rocks at Tangle-Ha, a remote village near St Cyrus in Aberdeenshire.
He was reported missing at around 3am yesterday when another angler raised the alarm.
Conditions in the area have been described as "exceedingly rough" with large sea swells of up to 10ft being reported.
Earlier, the local coastguard dispatched a search party to scour the coastline.
A rescue helicopter and a lifeboat from Montrose also assisted with the search.
After carrying out an initial search, the teams found no trace of the missing fisherman and all parties were stood down.
However, the coastguard launched a second search throughout the area late last night.
Kevin Brown, watch manager at Aberdeen coastguard, said: "A search is still ongoing to find this missing sea angler.
"We'd always recommend anglers check weather and tides before setting out and make sure they wear suitable clothing and a lifejacket. If you get into difficulty, or spot someone else in trouble, call 999 straight away and ask for the Coastguard."
The rescue effort is expected to continue through the night but will likely be hampered by forecasted high winds of 40-45mph.
Further rainfall is expected early tomorrow across Scotland.
There was also widespread flooding in the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, with Dumfries again badly affected.
The Solway Firth communities of Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbright and Rockcliffe were all heavily affected while the centre of Stornoway remained under water yesterday.
Flood warnings are also in place in with the River Earn, from Perth to Crieff, in danger of bursting its banks.
The vast majority of the country remains under flood alert.
In England, severe flood warnings are in place on the Severn estuary and along coastal areas from Land's End and Plymouth.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article