The authors investigate atmospheric and ocean drivers of the Novermber 2023 extreme high rainfall month in equatorial Africa. They study a number of drivers previously studied in the literature in relation to the season, and place the 2023 event in the context of the climatology. The authors highlight in their introduction a number of direct and dramatic impacts arising from the extreme weather, and therefore justify the focus on this particular period. 

The paper is well-written and provides a useful description of factors influencing an important extreme month of weather. The most persistent issue I had with this paper is the poor description of figure annotations. That is easily sorted, but I place the comment under “major” so the issue is clear. There are a few minor comments I have that either require small corrections or re-consideration by the authors. Once these are addressed, I can see the paper being publishable. 

Major comments 

Figs1, 3, 5,68, 9, 10 and 12 – all include boxes or lines annotating the figure, but which are not mentioned in the caption. Please explain what they are in the captions. 

Minor comments 

Sec2.1 - says you use ERA5 SST and ERSST for sea surface temperatures. Be clear throughout which you are using. I suggest you add to the caption of every relevant figure, unless there is a simple blanket statement you can make in the methods.  

L189 – what is “CB cell”? It is not defined anywhere. Given it’s referred to a number of times, it might be worth annotating on an early plot. 

L195 – Can you explicitly state if this is mean to be a scalar (as it is in the equation you present)? Often I would think V might be vector of u and v winds, with Q also being a vector with u and v components (or even z component too). Are you using “wind speed” magnitude for V? I.e. you are losing the direction information? 

L201 – add the term “climatology” or similar to be clear about this. Also in the caption 

L203 - “long-term mean (LTM) NOVEMBER rainfall” - “novermber” is needed. 

L280-282 – You highlight the contradiction in the DMI term between the 2019 and 2023 response. However, I can’t see that you explain why they are different. If you cannot explain it, can you be explicit at this point in the text and say so. If you do explain it, can you give a brief mention to what the discerning factor was at this point in the text. 

L334-334 - “These LLWs...” sentence. I’m not sure this sentence is entirely precise or correct. I’m not sure what you’re saying is cooling (subsiding air warms as it follows the dry adiabat). Is this just about land ocean temperature contrasts, and consequent changes in circulation. It sounds like your suggesting the circulation is causing the colder temperature over the ocean. Can you reconsider this sentence, and ensure your confident in it? Ideally, provide a reference which justifies the statement. 

L375 - “...upper troposphere...” - Your plot only goes to 400hPa. I’d say 400hPa is borderline upper troposphere so I’m not sure it’s a fairly persuasive statement. I think you’d either need to show the anomalies make it to 300-200hPa, or just say they do stretch deep into the troposphere up to 400hPa. 

Fig 8 caption – “Omega” has units hPa s-1. Vertical velocity, w, has units m s-1. Please be clear about which is being plotted here. 

Fig8 cpation – what does the 10E-3 ms-1 refer to? Is it the value of the arrow on the figure panels? If so it must be the units of the horizontal winds too, not just vertical velocity? This needs clarity 

L477 - “no vectors have entered...” - I’m not sure what you mean here. Whether arrows actually cross the box edges is an arbitrary choice of plotting position for the arrows. There clear are some meridional components to the winds along those 2 boundaries. I suggest you need to be precise about what you mean and quantify it. Do you mean no net meridional component along the boundary relative to the size of the net zonal component at the east and west boundaries? 

L517 – I'm not sure the red contours would be called “southwest”. They look like “central” or “west central” to me, since the very southwest (10-20E, 6-10S) is white contours. 

Technical comments 

L149 – kgkg-1 should have small letter “k” 

L345 - “JAS, The” needs to be a lower-case “t” 

L462 – “tropospheric” to “troposphere”? 

L506 - “confirmes” typo 

L557 - “favorasing” typo