It is clear that the paper has gone through a vigorous discussion, which has brought
out the strengths and weaknesses of the analyses, presentation and conclusions. Like
the reviewers, I remain convinced that these critical comments can be addressed satisfactorily, and if done so, it will make a very useful contribution to hydrologic science, in the areas of modeling and theory development. The revisions may have to be substantial, and therefore I will recommend major revisions. I will ensure that the revised paper undergoes thorough reviews, hopefully by the same reviewers. I look forward to a re-submission of the revised manuscript in due course.

Stefan, I am afraid I come to you with bad news, which is disappointing given the significant effort you put in to come up with a revised paper. I have three referee reports. All of them say this approach is promising, but yet all of them question the utility of this approach.

Reviewer #1 says: "The utility of the entropy balance method is not clear to me"
Reviewer #2 says: "This an interesting approach, but I do have some doubts about the usefulness of the method, which have to be clarified before publication"
Reviewer #4 says: "but I feel that some meaningful numerical analysis would be very beneficial for the manuscript and the readers, as it could be used to test some very fundamental and often implicit assumptions in physically based hydrological models. Without such analysis, I am afraid that further use of the paper would rely too much on a leap of faith that the approach is actually useful"

Reviewer #4 raises an important issue, which I agree with,which is that you do not include evaporation and therefore cycling of water is not included, which I would have though would be important for entropy maximization.

In spite of these comments the reviewers have many constructive suggestions: I believe that I cannot certify the paper for publication without a substantial response to the reviewers' major concerns. This clearly returns the paper back to you for another round of major revision, which I am not sure you are willing to do. On the one hand I would like to support this kind of work, but on the other hand, I am hesitant to allow publication of a paper that some might criticize as hand-wavy. Please make a decision and let me know - I know the reviewers are supportive of this kind of work - and will be willing to share ideas that might help you in the future.

I have accepted the paper for publication, but as a technical note, given the nature of the comments you received during the discussion phase