Dear Dr. Ferrarin:
On the basis of the reviewers’ evaluations and your replies in the interactive discussion, your manuscript will be reconsidered after a major revision (further review by editor and referees). You are requested to submit a revised version of your manuscript, where your text is modified according to the reviewers’ suggestions and the interactive discussion. The final publication of your manuscript in NHESS is conditional upon your answers to the reviewers and the changes in the revised version of your manuscript. Please, submit together with the revised version, a copy of your manuscript where all your changes are annotated and the list of your detailed answers to the reviewers’ comments.

Please, consider also these minor suggestions of mine:

a) I agree that you may not include in this study a detailed evaluation of the individual model performances (see reviewer 2), but I suggest that you insert a paragraph describing how to deal with the different accuracies of the models in a future operational framework

Further, I note that there are two issues that are relevant for early warning systems and are likely important component in an operational framework. They are briefly mentioned in the “Summary and Conclusions”, but you do not mention the former studies already available in the literature, specifically for Venice
b) the inclusion of a data assimilation procedure (e.g [1])
c) the probabilistic approach provided by a single model ensemble prediction. Note that papers showing this specifically for Venice are already available (e.g. [2],[3],[4]).
I suggest you paper your text is updated including these (and other) references

Looking forward to receiving your revised manuscript
Best regards
Piero Lionello

[1] Lionello P, Sanna A, Elvini E, Mufato R (2006) A data assimilation procedure for operational prediction of storm surge in the northern Adriatic Sea. Cont Shelf Res 26:539-553. doi:10.1016/j.csr.2006.01.003
[2] Mel R and Lionello P (2014) Storm surge ensemble prediction for the city of Venice. Weather Forecast 29:1044-1057. doi:10.1175/WAF-D-13-00117.1
[3] Mel R, Lionello P (2014) Verification of an ensemble prediction system for storm surge forecast in the Adriatic Sea. Ocean Dynam, 64:1803-1814. doi:10.1007/s10236-014-0782-x
[4] Mel R , Lionello P (2016) Probabilistic Dressing of a Storm Surge Prediction in the Adriatic Sea. Adv Meteorol 2016:3764519. doi:10.1155/2016/3764519

Dear Dr.Ferrarin:
the reviewer has no further comments on the revised version of your manuscript.
Therefore, I am happy to recommend your article for publication in NHESS.
I thank you for having considered NHESS for the publications of your research.
Best regards,
Piero Lionello