Dear Dr. Lekoloane,

I am now in receipt of the reviews of your revised manuscript. While both reviewers acknowledge that the manuscript has improved, Reviewer 1 is not satisfied yet with your response to two of his/her major comments from the first round, which should be carefully addressed in the revision. Reviewer 2 has two major comments, which can be addressed fairly easily, however. I thus intend to send the next version of the manuscript to Reviewer 1, but please also carefully consider the comments by Reviewer 2.

Best regards,

Johannes Dahl

Dear Dr. Lekoloane,

I am now in receipt of the review by Reviewer 1, who notices that the paper has further improved, and who offers minor suggestions that should be easy to address. I was unable to find your response to Reviewer 2. Please provide point-by-point responses to this review as well (a recommendation of minor revision still requires careful consideration of the comments and a formal reply). If you satisfactorily address the remaining comments, I’m ready to accept the paper after this round of revisions.

I noticed one point that I believe should also be addressed:

I think the argument that vertical wind shear was weaker than in “traditional” environments and hence the updraft was weaker than in northern-hemispheric supercells is not justified. The issue is that this conclusion is based on a comparatively coarse simulation. As a consequence, one shouldn’t expect particularly large values of vertical vorticity. Moreover, even if the supercell was well-resolved, the strength of the simulated mesocyclone is quite sensitive to model settings, such as the microphysics scheme, the lower boundary condition, etc. In short, a single simulation cannot be used to infer that supercells are generally weaker in South Africa than elsewhere. Moreover, the sampled environment may not be representative of the actual storm environment. This issue can be addressed by simply dropping the claim that supercells in South Africa are weaker than their northern-hemispheric cousins (and in consequence, no new vertical vorticity threshold would be required for supercells in South Africa).

Best regards,

Johannes Dahl, Co-Editor

Dear Lesetja Lekoloane,

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has now been accepted for publication in WCD. Congratulations!

Best wishes,

Johannes Dahl, Co-Editor