Dear Authors,

Thank you for providing responses to reviewers' comments. Overall I think the responses are satisfactory however I think more can be done in satisfactorily answering both reviewers comments regarding the use of CFSR. I would certainly encourage you to show comparison of CFSR with PRISM, and/or show that choice of CFSR as an input forcings data doesn't alter the primary conclusions.

I am looking forward to seeing the revised manuscript and will likely send it to the reviewers for their comments.

Best,
Shrad

Dear Authors,

Thank you again for submitting a revised version of the manuscript. Both reviewers agree that this version of the manuscript is improved. However reviewer #1 has raised some important issues (that I agree with) regarding the use of CFS and different normalization periods, which need to be addressed. I would encourage you to conduct supplementary analysis to show (1) why choice of CFSR is adequate for this analysis? (one suggestion would be compare CFSR forcings with NLDAS forcings) (2) why the choice of different normalization period won't affect the main findings? You could do this by showing a comparison between all the datasets for an overlapping period.

Please note that after receiving the revised version of the manuscript and your response, I'll see opinion of reviewer #1, before making my decision.

Thanks very much and I look forward to seeing the next version of the manuscript.

Best,
Shrad

Dear Authors,

Thank you for revising the manuscript. Please respond to reviewer #1's remaining comment regarding the differences in correlation maps for both periods but using temperature based indicators, as temperature climatology is likely to be different in 2001-2016 period from 1948-2016 period.

Thanks,
Shrad

Dear Authors,

Thank you for responding to the reviewer's comment. I am please to recommend publication of this manuscript.

Best,
Shrad