Dear Charles and Francis,

This is a nice paper and fits the scope of this journal and our special issue on changing hydrology and Earth systems in western Canada and other cold regions. All three reviewers were positive about the strengths of the paper and suggested publication after some revisions. I therefore recommend that this paper be published, subject to revision and further review.

The responses to the reviewer comments clearly indicate that much effort has already gone into considering the suggestions and making appropriate revisions based on these. I have a few general points, however. The reviewers felt that the paper should include more discussion on how the results apply to other cold regions dominated by snow or what these might mean for the future under continuing climate change, but it isn't clear from the responses to what extent this has been addressed. I agree with the reviewers that this is important and needs to be adequately covered. The reviewers had pointed out that there are structural issues with the paper and that it should be reorganized. It appears this has been dealt with, which is good. The reviewers had also suggested additional analyses that could be done or further data that could be considered. The authors have argued mostly against that, and although some additional variables have been explored, I am not entirely convinced that following some of these suggestions is not necessary or worthwhile. For example, would it not be useful to consider the snow pillow data from the BC River Forecast Centre?

I look forward to seeing the revised manuscript.

Dear Authors,
The revised paper has been reviewed and some additional referee comments have come back. Please consider these comments, respond accordingly, and make any necessary revisions.


Comments from Reviewer #2
I have re-read the manuscript, and aside from the few points indicated below, I feel that the paper is ready for publication. I do not need to see the paper again.
1. I understand that operational prediction applications are not the main driver for the study. That’s fine, but for what it's worth, it does reduce somewhat the practical usefulness of the results. Still, as the authors note, the results are useful in a scientific sense.
2. I’m still having trouble fully appreciating Figure 4; the third paragraph in section 3.3.3 doesn’t help that much. Please explain what each point in the scatterplot represents – statistics for subsets of years associated with El Nino state, I assume? How many sample pairs go into these correlation calculations? The number must be small, making significance difficult to demonstrate.
3. p. 23, lines 11-12. Section 3 mentioned twice.
4. p. 23, line 23 (“… following conditions were to hold.”). Please clarify: both conditions, or either condition?

Comments from Reviewer #3 are included as a supplemental pdf file

Dear authors,

The manuscript has been improved considerably, the responses to reviewer comments have been mostly satisfactory, and the paper is nearly ready for publication in final form. I have a few minor comments and simple technical corrections.

1) Reviewer #1 has expressed concerns about Figure 4 and the CRI and how clear the description and interpretation of these are. The responses provided in the author comments after both rounds of review provide a clear explanation, particularly the more recent response explaining what each point in the plot represents. It would be beneficial to include some of this within the final paper to help the readers better understand the concepts.

2) Regarding date formats for HESS, at https://www.hydrology-and-earth-system-sciences.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html -> Mathematical requirements -> Date and time there is the following information:

25 July 2007 (dd month yyyy), 15:17:02 (hh:mm:ss). Often it is necessary to specify the time if referring to local time or universal time coordinated. This can be done by adding "LT" or "UTC", respectively.

Please change the dates throughout the manuscript to be consistent with this.

3) Regarding insertion of the URL (https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/station-hydrologic-model-output) on page 7, line 25, this is acceptable. However, note that on that webpage it states: "When referring to the Station Hydrologic Model Output data retrieved from the website or found otherwise, the source must be clearly stated: Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, (Jan. 2014). Station Hydrologic Model Output. Downloaded from on ."

4) Page 8, line 15: Please correct the grammar in the phrase "Trends were detected in certain of the time series analyzed in this work..."

5) Page 8, lines 18-20: Should a consistent tense be used here? i.e. "If a significant relationship was found... then the coefficient is taken..." You may use your discretion.

6) Pages 9 and 10: Section 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 all start with "We begin", which is repetitive. You may want to revise this, but it is up to your discretion.

7) Page 10, line 22: Should it not say "These plots" rather than "This plot"?

8) Pages 20 and 21, case studies: It would be helpful to note for each of the three years the rank of the observed APF, in addition to that of the simulated APF. For instance, 1972 had the highest observed APF, and 1999 had the 5th highest APF (Fig. 5a). This helps remind the reader of the difference between observations and model results, especially given that in Section 4.4 you are referring to observed/estimated APF for the two highest flow years.

9) Page 43, Figure 8: the figure would be easier to interpret if each graph were labeled by basin or by alphabetic notation, as with the other figures. Also, the red to green colour scale may be difficult to interpret for some readers with this colour blindness. You may use your discretion.