General Comments:

The authors have done a great job on the manuscript titled “Simulated Particle Evolution within a Winter Storm: Contributions of Riming to Radar Moments and Precipitation Fallout”. The manuscript was a pleasure to read as it is well-written, clear, and well-organized. The authors have addressed important scientific questions, have understood well what previous work has been done on their research topic, and have presented work that adds a significant contribution beyond what has been done previously. I have only minor comments that should be easy to address.

Scientific questions/issues:

• It is probably good to briefly explain, in a sentence or two, the representativeness of this storm for an East Coast U.S. winter cyclone in Section 2.1. While this storm was a moderate storm with mixed precipitation that was stretched along a long frontal boundary (and was suited well for your study), a number of East Coast U.S. storms, including some on the IMPACTS project, were more intense with regions of elevated convection, strong frontal boundaries/circulations, deep-stratiform comma head clouds, and a variety of snowband patterns that evolved quickly with time. This will help add context for a reader that may not be too familiar with winter cyclones, especially over the East Coast.

Minor comments/technical:

• In Figure 4, I believe the y-axis should be labeled Height (km) not Height (m)
• I’m not sure this has to be done but I noticed Height km MSL is used in the text. However, on the figures, it’s Height (km). Again, may not be totally necessary, but just for consistency, use Height (km MSL) on the y-axis figure labels.
• Lines 471 – 472: You state the V_D increased from -0.72 m s^-1 to -1.00 m s^-1. Technically that’s a decrease in value, correct? However, I also realize most readers will know what you mean, that the particles are falling faster. Perhaps adding a little to the sentence like: “V_D increased from -0.72 m s^-1 to -1.00 m s^-1, meaning the particles fell faster” or something like that could help.

General Comments

Overall, the manuscript is well-structured, with an in-depth introduction laying the foundation for the goals and methods of the paper. The paper falls within the scope of ACP, while utilizing novel methods presented from past literature and unique in situ data to answer these questions. The experimental design is explained in a clear manner, and limitations arising from the methods are sufficiently addressed. I only have a few minor comments, as listed below:

Specific Comments

One of the key findings from this paper is demonstrating the usefulness of using V_D to discriminate regions of significant riming from regions of aggregation or other microphysical processes. However, as the authors also acknowledge the uncertainty range of V_D measured by the HIWRAP Ku-band (lines 502-503), it may be helpful to reiterate the importance of the relative change of V_D with height, rather than the magnitude of V_D, in the conclusions. In particular, given that all of the simulations shown in Figures 9 and 10 fall within the ±1 m s^-1 range, a brief discussion of the robustness of the differences in the vertical derivative of V_D may reduce any possible misinterpretation of the results presented in the paper.

Technical Corrections

Lines 471-472: consider rewording the phrase “V_D increases from -0.72 m s^-1 to -1.00 m s^-1” to clarify that the speed is increasing, although the numerical value is becoming more negative.