The manuscript entitled “Total water levels along the South Atlantic Bight during three along-shelf propagating tropical cyclones: relative contributions of storm surge and wave runup” by Hsu et al. aims at improving the understanding of the linkages among tropical cyclones characteristics and total water level components. Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Dorian (2019), and Isaias (2020) were chosen as case studies in the South Atlantic Bight and numerical simulations (COAWST modeling system) combined with in situ observations were used to model the extreme total water levels induced by them. The topic addressed in the manuscript is in line with the scope of the NHESS journal and is relevant to the scientific community to better understand storm impacts and their effects on the coastlines.

I found that the manuscript is quite long, not always smooth and streamlined reading due to the presence of many acronyms and subsections. I suggest reformulating some statements or thinking about the possibility to merge some subsections. Therefore, I hope my suggestions are helpful in improving it.

For future publications focused on the same tropical cyclones analyzed here, I suggest exploring the presence of tidal distortion near Cape Canaveral during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, as highlighted in the public discussion associated with your preprint (https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-49-CC1).

As a result of the above considerations, I conclude that the manuscript is suitable for publication with some minor revisions. I provide detailed general and point-by-point comments/suggestions below.

General comments:

1) I suggest to avoid references in the abstract section because it should be stand alone. In this section, you must briefly introduce your personal contributions instead of the work of others.

2) As the manuscript stands today, some of the methods used in this application are in the introduction (e.g. the empirical formulations for R₂). It would be helpful to have a methods section easily accessible to the reader within the manuscript. Moreover, some findings are introduced in the discussion section (see e.g. Figs. 10 and 11). I suggest merging the results and discussion sections into one section. Alternatively, if you want to keep this setup, please use this section only to discuss your findings.

3) Please, introduce the acronyms in the main text. For example, the translation speed of storm (V_t) is introduced in the table caption but not in the main text. Please, uniform the style throughout the manuscript.

4) Avoid using symbols as +, -, or = inside brackets introduced in the main text, unless you are using an inline equation such as in line 418.

5) Sometimes you use “peak 𝜂_𝑇𝑠” and other times “peak 𝜂_𝑇”. Be consistent throughout the text.

Point-by-point comments:

• Figures 2, 3, 7, 11, A4, and A3. They lost quality during the exportation step. Lines, dots, axes labels, internal and external box grids are blurred. Please, improve the resolution.
• Lines 39-42. It would be helpful to summarize the classification definition of the four regimes. There is the reference for more details. Maybe something like “[…] regimes: inundation (TWLs ≥ D_crest), swash (TWLs < D_base), overwash (…), and collision (…). Among these, coastal dunes experience […]” is more appropriate.
• Line 53. Avoid “=” inside the brackets. For example, you can say “(i.e. the sum of astronomic tides, mean sea level, and storm surge). You can also indicate the name of the variable you introduced. I suppose is the water level observed.
• Line 54. If data are available at the NOAA repository, please add reference and link.
• Line 66. Use “Eqs. 1 and 2” instead of “Eq. 1 and Eq. 2”.
• Lines 70-71. Avoid the use of “=” inside brackets. Use instead “is”.
• Line 72. Change Eq. 2 with Eq. 1.
• Lines 92-97. I suggest moving the statement “Thus, we employed […] for analysis and comparison” after “Despite the importance of […] had not been thoroughly examined”. Also, please add “on the contrary” or “conversely” before “Senechal et al. (2011)”.
• Lines 98-103. Please, reformulate the statements. For example, “Under projected climatic conditions, TC characteristics are projected to change at global scale (add reference). Thereby the proportion of high-intensity […] to increase. In this context of change, the main goal of this study is to ascertain how TC […] to TWLs. With that aim […] similar tracks”.
• Line 108. The acronym V_t is introduced in Table 1 but not in the main text.
• Line 145. Explain how you evaluate the suitability of the chosen exchange intervals.
• Lines 152-153. Please, move the link after RAP and add the reference.
• Lines 155 and 162. Please, add references for the GFS and HYCOM database.
• Lines 165-168. Add reference for the Flather boundary. Furthermore, panel A is indicated with a capital letter in the main text and in the caption of the figure while in the figure a lowercase letter is used. Please, uniform the style.
• Line 186. Please, add the repository link and references for NOAA tide gauges and NDBC buoys.
• Line 219. T_p is not yet introduced in the text.
• Caption of Figure 4. I suggest using “the red, cyan, and black points indicated […]”.
• Table 2. Improve the table headers. I suppose that D_base refers to the second column.
• Lines 276-277. As reported in Figure 5, the difference of 22.6 hours is for T_ETA. Please, change each of the contents in the brackets.
• Figures 7 and 11. The x-axis label is missing.
• Figure 8. I suggest to introduce this figure in the supplementary material.
• Figure 10. Use A1, A2), B1, B2) and C1, C2) in the figure caption.
• Line 455. Change “in contrary” with “on the contrary”.

The manuscript compares coastal sea level setup associated with three different tropical cyclones that were similar in their intensities and trajectories, yet resulting in different coastal hazard along the South Atlantic Bight. As for other reviewer, for me the manuscript is also too techical and therefore hard to follow. Also, I am supporting other comments of other reviewers, so will not repeat them here.

In addition, what seems as a weakness to me is the model evaluation, which is performed integrally over a prolonged (10 days) interval with just one measure coming out of it ('skill'). However, such a defined skill cannot say anything about model performance during extreme conditions (i.e., during the close passage of a hurricane) as is largely determined by a backgound conditions to which models are normally performing better. From figures, I see (and not easy to see in figures) substantial underestimations and overestimations for some stations for peak sea level values. Therefore, I would like to see model verification during extreme η0 and TWL values (using max values, or using q-q plots, tails of pdfs, or similar) with model performance validated during extreme conditions. Such an evaluation might also use estimates of 'maximum consecutive duration' from both model and observations, to see if the model can reproduce persistence in coastal flooding as well.