The authors present an analysis of several storms induced landslide events, most relating to atmospheric rivers phenomena in California. They retrieve rainfall from a gridded gauge product (covering >10 years, 6hr resolution, 4km spatial resolution), and a leaky bucket model to constrain regolith moisture and derive a soil moisture anomaly, A*, relative to a 15 yr return event. They show that 15 yr return appear to be the minimal return time for causing extensive landsliding based on 4 well constrained cases and then show and discuss the advantage of using a soil moisture anomaly (rather than simple rainfall anomaly) to understand landsliding triggered by rainfall in California. The work is a nice progression from previous work arguing for the use of anomaly to study landslide event (Rainfall anomaly for Marc et al., 2019, or soil moisture anomaly for Saito and Matusyama 2012, but with a more complex methodology and rather preliminary data). Therefore the authors’ work goes provides first basis for simple, physically meainingful and regional scale indicators that could provide a basis for landslide hazard forecasting during storms. In terms of methodology and presentation, I had reviewed a previous version of this work and a lot of my previous concerns in terms of methodology and clarity have been addressed and this version of the draft appears very clear and well thought to me. I therefore congratulate the authors, as I think the work will be a very good contribution to Esurf !

I provide in the attached document a series of minor comments where I have identified potential improvements.

Sincerely, Odin Marc

This is a nice contribution to the literature in landslide science focused on spatiotemporal assessment of landslide potential using a simplified rainfall index approach. The concept is novel and the manuscript is well written, but some important details are missing related to the simplifying assumptions and methodology, as well as some critical discussion. These gaps can be addressed by addressing my comments in the attached document. Following these revisions the manuscript should ultimately be published as a final paper in NHESS.