Dear Authors,
Thank you for your detailed responses to the referees’ reports. I find this is an interesting paper which could provide a valuable roadmap for the hydrologic community if it is able to clearly set out the proposed future directions and obstacles for deep learning applications in comparison with existing approaches.
The reviewers highlighted some important issues and have made some useful suggestions which would benefit the manuscript, especially clarifying the text to avoid any specialist jargon or verbiage; and highlighting how DL differs from existing approaches by providing concrete evidence of its utility, as well as a balanced view of drawbacks.
The preliminary revision that has been uploaded is helpful in highlighting how you aim to do this.
I also appreciate your efforts to illustrate the manuscript and think it would certainly benefit from some carefully-crafted illustrations (including the proposed roadmap).
Minor points: In Figure 1, the term ‘human-directed target’ could perhaps be clarified. The proposed revised title (‘DL-powered’) could perhaps also be simplified.
I would therefore like to invite you to upload a revised manuscript for further review, incorporating the proposed changes and additions, and making any other modifications where you see fit.
Sincerely,
Louise Slater

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting the revised manuscript. I find that the revision has addressed the reviewers’ main concerns well and that overall the manuscript is considerably improved. The revised manuscript contains many new and interesting opinions.

Some minor comments:
- In Figure 3, panels a and b are not mentioned in the caption and it is unclear to what extent panel b is really necessary to understand the points made in the caption.
- Some readers might argue that artificial neural networks are a form of DL that has been around for decades (hundreds of papers) and that this part of the history of DL in hydrology might merit a little more acknowledgment than the brief reference in section 2.2.1..?
- It is interesting that you use a classic table (Table 1) to highlight the growth of DL papers rather than a visualisation (minor point)!

Overall, I find that this work provides an interesting roadmap of future directions for the hydrologic community and look forward to seeing the published manuscript.

Regards,
Louise Slater