Dear authors,

Your manuscript has been reviewed by 2 referees. I was pleased to see that both referees were generally positive about the manuscript, and came up with constructive, but relatively minor, suggestions for further improvement. Due to the minor character of most comments, I have decided that minor revisions are necessary before the manuscript can be considered for publication, and that I will evaluate the revision myself (in principle) rather than returning it to the referees for evaluation.

Concerning the remark of one of the authors on other studies on the 2018 drought the following: our group also has a manuscript in discussion (https://hess.copernicus.org/preprints/hess-2020-358/, feel free to comment), and there will be a special issue in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, see: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/forthcoming-issues. If it comes out soon it might be useful to you in the revision.

Looking forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Best regards

Ryan Teuling

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript on the 2018 drought. Overall, I am satisfied with how you have addressed the reviewers' concerns, maybe with the exception of the reasons for choosing a reference period so far in the past. I don't disagree with your motivation for doing so, but I believe this should be stated clearly in the manuscript, along with a remark that several droughts occurring after 2000 would have shifted the SPI/SPEI to slightly less extreme values. I am happy to accept your manuscript provided you address this issue by adding a few sentences to 3.2 on page 9. This can be done as technical correction, meaning it won't be evaluated by me (if you wish to check feel free to drop me an email before submitting the final files).

As with respect to your question on the table: I see no issues here since the table fits well in the final layout. If any issues arise you can solve this later with the copernicus staff responsible for the typesetting.

Best regards, congratulations on the acceptance, and looking forward to seeing your study being published in HESS,

Ryan Teuling