Dear authors,

as you have seen, your manuscript was assessed by two reviewers, who both appreciate your analysis. They, however, also express a few concerns. In particular, the fact that observations of SWE were not systematically exploited to confront the model output with real-world data. You have provided a justification for that in your reply to the reviewers. Yet, it remains somewhat unclear and thus unconvincing as to why you chose not to systematically use SWE observations.

Furthermore, essentially no sites with dynamic, transient snowpacks that undergo several accumulation and melt cycles within one season were analysed, as pointed out by Reviewer #1. I strongly encourage you to include sites like that in the analysis as this will likely allow you to draw much stronger conclusions.

I am looking forward to receiving a revised version of your manuscript, in which all reviewer comments are addressed.
Best regards, Markus Hrachowitz

Dear authors,
Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful revision. The reviewer comments were adequately addressesd. I think this manuscript will be a very interesting contribution and I am glad to accept it for publication as is. Congratulations!
Best regards, Markus Hrachowitz