Numerical Simulation of a Severe Blowing Snow Event over the Prydz Bay Region

The article focuses on a cyclonic event in the Prydz Bay Region of Antarctica. The article is nicely structured, and it includes nice results explaining the influence of cyclone on the snowfall and blowing snow. The article uses non-hydrostatic model CRYOWRF to understand the phenomenon which is a welcome step in understanding the Antarctic phenomenon especially katabatic winds and blowing snow.

My major comment is that while the authors mention that the focus of the paper is on the blowing snow, the paper is actually more about the cyclonic event but rather blowing snow feels like a small part of the paper.

1. And discussion section reads like a repetition of the results section which is already quite extensive.
2. The authors only briefly touch upon different sensitivity studies (with and without blowing snow) (lines 660 – 711), but do not discuss in detail what is the effect on local meteorology. What would actually make the paper more interesting and more relevant to understanding blowing snow, and also increase the value of the paper is if the authors focused more on the effect of blowing snow on katabatic wind, previous studies (e.g. Kodama et al. (1985)) indicate that blowing snow increases the Katabatic force. With previous RCM simulations it has been difficult to resolve this phenomenon, with the current setup used by the authors it is possible to have a look at the effect of blowing snow on the katabatic force and other meteorological variables. Adding this analysis would actually improve the quality of the paper and also allows us to generalize some ideas.
3. The paper in the current state is too long and the sensitivity studies with respect to blowing snow is overlooked which could add important insights and of possible value to the community.

After these revisions the paper can be reconsidered for publication.

Minor comments

1. Line 47 – It profoundly affects almost every ‘link’ in the Antarctic cryosphere? What do you mean by ‘link’?
2. Line 66 – Which study? Rephrase this sentence.
3. Introduction could be shortened and more streamlined
4. Line 186: What is etc? Please mention all the variables relevant to the paper that are measured.
5. Line 181: Which automatic weather station is this? What are the specifications? Please include some details.
6. Line 211: Please add appropriate reference
7. Line 231: Typically WRF nested domain grid ratios are either 3 or 5. So in this case it should have been: 12, 4, and 1.3 km. Is there any effect of choice of 1km on the results?
8. Fig 2: Latitude and Longitude replot them in white color so they are visible. It is very difficult to find the coordinates with the current figure
9. Fig 2: Please include a separator between date and time to avoid confusion
10. Line 307: Please include statistical values when mentioning ‘good agreement’ with the observations, a visual match is not enough. From Figure 3(a) it seems the observed windspeed during the peak of the event could be more than 10 m/s compared to simulations
11. Line 375: Fig 5d

Reference:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annals-of-glaciology/article/effect-of-blowing-snow-on-katabatic-winds-in-antarctica/C64D9FE1D932CBA050FE74B73AB7333A