Dear Mr. Keys,

I am pleased to let you know that both reviewers are very positive about the scientific significance of this work and recommend publication in HESS. So do I.

Both reviewers differ with respect to the scientific quality of your analysis. While reviewer 1, an expert in mesoscale atmospheric modelling, is very postive recommending minor revisions, reviewer 2 is critical with respect to your EOF analysis. The related comments seem to me partly well reasoned, although I must admit that I have problems with understanding the reviewers recommendation with to provide time series of principal components. I did a PCA myself a couple of times – also on precipitation fields: the clue is that the PC do not vary in time, while the factor loadings are time dependent. The field of interest can be recombined for any time step using the by a linear combination of the most important PC and the factor loadings.

As both methods (PCA and EOF) analysis are closed, the point to providing the time series of I guess loadings can be easily and should be addressed.

Best regards,

Erwin Zehe

Dear Mr. Keys,

I am very much pleased by the way you addressed the reviewer recommendations and happy to accept this very interesting study for publication.

Best regards,

Erwin Zehe