Scotland floods: Warning of continued weather disruption

Disruption from heavy rain battering eastern parts of Scotland is expected to continue on Saturday.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) said the flood risk would be downgraded, but there would be a residual impact of Friday's weather.

Sepa said some rivers would not hit peak levels until early morning.

On Friday a police search was held after reports that someone was swept away trying to rescue a dog in the River Don at Monymusk, Aberdeenshire.

A police spokesperson said: "Emergency Services attended and searches were carried out. Following assessments of the river conditions, the search has been stood down. Police inquiries are ongoing."

The Met Office lifted its amber weather alert at 21:00 on Friday, after disruption saw many roads rendered impassable and the East Coast Mainline was closed.

Some parts of the village of Ballater on Royal Deeside were left without power. Police went door-to-door in some areas asking people to leave.

And more than 300 properties in Brechin, Angus, were given the opportunity to evacuate and spend the night in a local school amid fears of further flooding.

Sepa flood duty manager, Vincent Fitzsimons, said: "The event in the north-east is similar in magnitude to that of Storm Frank in 2016 and some rivers will, by the end of the day, have seen record high flows.

"Some of these rivers will then not peak until early Saturday morning."

Aboyne in Aberdeenshire recorded as much rain in 48 hours as would be normally expected during the entire month of November.

A total of nine flood alerts, 30 flood warnings and seven severe flood warnings were in place across the country on Friday.

The severe warnings were for Brechin, Kintore, Kemnay, Inverurie, Aberdeen (Dee), Ballater and Finavaon and Tannadice.

Travel disruption included:

The Scottish government's resilience committee met to discuss the impact of the severe weather.

Justice Secretary, and lead minister for resilience, Keith Brown warned of further disruption.

He said: "The high rainfall is causing significant issues in some parts of the country, and is now likely to cause potentially damaging and dangerous risk of flooding in some areas.

"The conditions have already caused disruption to the transport network, with further disruption expected - so it's important people plan their journeys before they set off."

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said it had received a high number of emergency calls about flooding from people in Brechin, Forfar and Dundee.

Aberdeenshire Council said community rest centres were set up at Victoria and Albert Hall in Ballater, as well as Aboyne Academy, Inverurie Community Campus and Kemnay Academy.

Angus was also badly affected, with the council taking the decision in advance to close many schools and issuing a plea to drivers not to drive through flooded roads.

The local authority said its road network was heavily impacted by the heavy and persistent rain.