I would like to warmly thank all the reviewers, who did an excellent job, timely uploading mainly positive and always constructive comments (and who recommended either major or minor revisions).
All such comments have been taken into due account in the Authors’ replies, where they have explained either what they plan to do in order to address them in the revised version of the paper or when the raised points, even if interesting, cannot be included in the present work (e.g. analysis of groundwater loss/gain and additional focus on low flows).
I fully approve the Authors’ list of main task, including, in terms of new analyses:
- Re-analysis increasing the warm-up period (at least in the regions where it is needed)
- Exclusion of catchments with less than 5 years of data, but I would suggest excluding those with less than 10, if a few years are needed for warm-up (a data set with more than 1000 catchments is still large enough…);
- Analysis of additional performance metrics (the three components of the KGE? Others?) and comments on how the metrics used for selection of behavioral models influences the results
In terms of additional information:
- Additional information on catchment properties (snow-impact and typology of human factors), in Section 2 (and a recall to them when needed to interpret the results – but I would not further ‘load’ current Figure 7)
- More information on the differences in the functioning of the models (“modelling decisions”), in order to gain information for model selection purposes.
And I do agree that a synthesis of Section 5 would definitely help the "fruition" of the presentation.
Lastly, it is indeed a very good idea uploading supplementary materials: in particular, as highlighted, it is necessary uploading the values of all performance criteria and of the parameter sets. Graphs presenting a more extensive use of catchment properties for explaining the performance might be uploaded too, provided the Authors believe that they indeed allow to better interpret the results.

Dear Authors,
I believe you have adequately addressed all the main points raised by Referees and Editor, as you anticipated in the discussion, and that with your considerable revision work you have definitely improved the paper.

I attach my comments as notes on the Reply letter pdf file: you may ignore the highlights of the text (they were for me, to stress the important points) and address only the comments in the aside notes: they are mainly comments asking to clarify where, in the revision, you have addressed a specific comment. So they are mainly changes to be made to the Reply letter file.

In terms of amendments of the manuscript I have only one request:

On Comment 19 by Ref#3:

Ref3’s Comment: “P13 L12 “we found that the ensemble of model structures produced better results overall than any single model” – can you validate that statement from your figures?”

Authors’ Response: “This cannot be directly validated in a specific figure, but it can be seen across the figures, especially looking at Figure 7, where we see that no single model produces good results for all catchments.”

Actually a reference to the actual results (numbers/figures) for substantiating such conclusion is needed in the revised manuscript (integrate ll 30-31, p. 17 rev manuscript).

Since i) the paper was substantially modified from the original version, ii) I have decided not to ask to the referees to go through a full new revision, and iii) the file with Word track-changes you uploaded was not very easy to follow (I would suggest for the future to add a table with a recap of all the changes you have done and the comments that prompted them, rather - or in addition – to the track-change file, where, for example, the moving of paragraphs is impossible to detect), I ask you to carefully check the revised version before the next submission in order to avoid any possible ‘clerical’ error.

All the best,
Elena Toth

Dear Authors,
thank you for having taken care also of the second round of comments. I attach my last (I promise!) few, minor comments on the reply letter (at pages 16, 29 and 51).
I am very glad you have submitted your paper to HESS, I believe it will be a very useful reference not only for UK modellers.
All the best,
Elena Toth