Dear authors,
as you could see from the diverse reviews, there are several points that need clarification and require additional work to make the paper suitable for publication in HESS. As I disagree with the remark of reviewer #2 that this publication should better be published in an operational journal, I hope that the authors see the need to strengthen the scientific aspects and process representation of the paper to allow a publication in HESS. Please consider careful all suggestions by the reviewer and provide a detailed response letter and a marked down paper with the changes you made in the revised version.
Best regards
Markus Weiler

Thank you for submitting the revised version of the manuscript with the detailed response and the changes. In general, I am happy with the revised manuscript and it is close to publication, but I would like to ask the authors to add/correct a couple of minor points before the manuscript can be considered to be published in HESS:
1) Define dt in Eq. 2.
2) why is dt divided by 6 in Eq 2+3 - not clear to me at the moment without coding the equations - if this is an artefact of the time step of thew model, than the equations should we written independent of the time step of the model.
3) as far as I can see, c3, c4, c5 in Eq. 8 are not defined - if they are constant, please provide values.
4) The RTI model does not consider air temperature at all - I know several snow models that combine short wave radiation and air temperature information to improve the model - why is this not done for the RTI model - hence, is the model than weaker to simulate climate change?
5) I cannot find the Kv values and fu in the equations, but they are important parameters of the model (Tab 1) - please clarify or add.

Best regards
Markus Weiler