It appears to me that the real goal of this modeling exercise was to select one of the two models used in the study for possible future use (perhaps for operational purposes). However the authors' bias toward the finite element model SHYFEM becomes quite evident. It is normally the practice in such inter-comparisons to run each model in its best possible configuration and with identical forcing and boundary conditions to assess the relative performance. Clearly that was not done in this study. Instead different heat flux and wind stress formulations were used. This strategy dilutes the utility of the study. This point was picked up by both the reviewers and in my opinion, was not addressed satisfactorily by the authors except for their statement that that should be done in a future study. Nevertheless, the reviewers did not recommend that the paper be rejected and I have taken that into consideration in my decision. However, I would like the authors to state explicitly in the Conclusions that this was an oversight that will be corrected in a future study.

The most significant findings of the study are that a hydrostatic model is adequate for studying a DWF event in shallow waters of the coast. The finding that proper treatment of riverine influence is important is quite obvious. However equally obvious is the need for proper initial conditions, and surface forcing by wind stress and heat flux. I don't believe the authors have done a thorough investigation of these aspects. I would like the authors to amend/include statements in the Conclusions alluding to this.

With these minor revisions, I accept the paper for publication in OS.

Please change one of the paragraphs in the Conclusions to:

It is important to point out that in this paper we used different wind stress formulation and bulk formulas for the two models, which result in uncertainties in the model comparison. Further studies, perhaps using direct forcing with heat and mass fluxes provided by meteorological models, would be helpful in reducing these uncertainties.