A major rescue operation just launched in Scotland and the missing person hasn't been found

This search has now been running for close to ten hours. And it's off a stretch of Scottish coast known for sudden, dangerous seas when the wind picks up.

Here's the weather picture. A Met Office yellow warning for strong winds covers most of Scotland right now, and the far north-east of Northern Ireland too. It runs until 9pm today. Gusts of up to 70mph.

But here's the thing. That warning only started at 3am. This person had already been reported missing in the water nearly three hours before it even began.

So the wind was already rising before the official warning caught up.

And this comes after a rough weekend on the west coast. Storm Boelo brought gusts of up to 84mph. A third of a month's rain fell on parts of Scotland in two days. Two men were killed by falling trees in that storm. One in Finchley, north London. One in Dumfries and Galloway. Power cuts hit more than 838,000 properties.

Now, no source has directly linked the waves at Largs to Storm Boelo by name. What is confirmed is this: a severe weather warning covering this coast was live at the time, and the west of Scotland had already been battered for two days running.

HM Coastguard says quote "believed to have been swept into the sea by large waves".

That's five emergency services now searching one stretch of water.

Police Scotland is treating this under its own incident number for today.

And one thing this is not. It is not the search for the 82-year-old man who fell from a CalMac ferry near Arran, whose body was found on this same beach two days ago. That case is closed. This one is not.

No word yet on the condition of the person missing, or whether the search has been scaled back since first light.

Emergency services are still there. And nobody has said yet whether this is still a rescue, or whether it's turned into a recovery.