Dear Authors,

As you can see the reviewers offer rather different recommendations—Reviewer 1 recommends reject, while Reviewer 2 recommends acceptance pending minor technical corrections.  In my own reading of the paper, my impression is that the tools and techniques are state-of-the-art and novel (I especially liked the storm-following analyses), and that the paper is well written.

However, I also noted that the paper seems to state a lot of facts about the simulation without a clear story or any in-depth analysis.  This is also reflected, e.g., in the goals of the paper, which promise among other aspects, an analysis of the initiation of convection and of the role of topography, neither of which is meaningfully addressed.  Further, some of the main conclusions are that CAPE decreases along the inflow parcel trajectories, and that inflow air is drawn from south of the Alps.  What is lacking is the an in-depth analysis and the relevance of these findings: Why does CAPE decrease (perhaps you merely sample the updraft as the parcels approach the storm?), and why is it novel/relevant?  Why is the origin of the air south of the Alps relevant?  I also wondered how sensitive the trajectories are e.g., to the output intervals.  Maybe the rogue backward trajectories that terminate south of the Alps result from trajectory errors—backward trajectories in a convergent flow field are prone to interpolation errors. 

I think you have all the tools to ask meaningful questions and find some insightful answers.  Perhaps focus on one o two main questions regarding e.g., the environment (storm-centered analyses) or microphysical processes and perform a more in-depth analysis?  See especially the comments by Reviewer 1 who offers a number of suggestions on how to refocus the paper.

I do invite you to revise this paper, but as an option you might also consider withdrawing the current version of the manuscript and to resubmit it once the required, somewhat extensive, revisions are complete.  

Here are a few specific comments I wrote down while reading the paper:

Line 240: Why not show deep-layer shear (and maybe SRH)?  CAPE and shear strongly determine storm structure/intensity, so seeing how they evolve together would be really insightful.

Line 412: Trajectories are indeed very insightful, but in the context of severe storms these have been used for decades, so the novelty is perhaps overstated a bit--or did you mean "storm-following" in this case (object-based)?  If so, I agree, and suggest leveraging this method more strongly to present your findings.

Small note, throughout the paper: “Lagrangian trajectories” is redundant: Trajectories always imply that the Lagrangian framework (rather than the Eulerian one) is being used.

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