Dear Dr. Halder,

We have now at last received to reviewer reports on your manuscript - my apologies for the delay.

It is my pleasure to report that the reviews report positively on the topic of study and the relevance of the obtained outcomes. However, both reviewers raise relevant points about the experimental setup, and I agree with the reviewers that these will have to be addressed before the manuscript can be considered for publication in HESS, if not by adjusting the experiment then at least with a detailed justification of the current setup.

Additionally, reading carefully through the manuscript, I identify a couple of further issues with the presentation, which I think need addressing:

- I believe that the manuscript needs further editing for language, but can also benefit from a more condensed, less repetitive, and more precise writing style. For instance, try to avoid qualitative statements such as "reasonably well" (p6593, 6594, 6595), use the more formal "until" instead of "till". On p.6588, l.1-4: remove this section; it is sufficient to outline the structure of the manuscript once (p6583) and then simply follow the outlined structure. These are just a couple of examples, but I encourage you to go carefully through the whole manuscript.

- The literature review reads rather like a listing of past findings with references. I would encourage you to make this more strongly into a coherent argumentation about the state of the art in the research field, and how your experimental setup will push the boundaries of current knowledge.

Kind regards