Dear Authors,
I would like to warmly thank you for your patience in the delay occurred in the discussion phase. On the other hand, both referees provided very constructive comments and useful suggestions, so I believe it was worthy waiting!
I fully agree with the referees' very positive opinion on the work, needing only minor revisions and you have already, in your detailed reply letters, fully described where you plan to add the required details and insights/observations (mainly in the Method and conclusions sections).
Therefore, I look forward to receiving the revised version.
Best wishes,
Elena Toth
PS: I believe that Ref#2 in the last (10th) comment was referring not to the meteorological index SPI but to the Standardised Drought Index proposed by Vicente-Serrano et al., 2012 (Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 17(2):318-332): nonetheless, your observation on the filtering effect of water management holds also for streamflow-based indexes and not only for meteorological ones.

Dear Authors,
many thanks for your final version, where I believe you have included all the additional information required by the conveners for better explaining the proposed approach and its potential.
Best regards,
Elena Toth