Interactive comment on “ A 3 - D simulation of drifting snow in the turbulent boundary layer ” by

The paper is of great interest. It introduces a 3D model coupling effects between wind and snow particles. The coupled model is evaluated on a flat erodible snow surface under various wind conditions and is compared to wind tunnel experiments, the results of which are published in the literature. The model takes into account all involved physical processes and allows to better understand behaviors of particles in a boundary layer. The main criticism that can be made is that this paper takes a great inspiration from a paper recently published for drifting sand by Dupont, Bergametti, Marticorena and Simoëns (Modeling saltation intermittency published in Journal of geophysical research : Atmosphere, vol 118, 7109–7128, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50528, 2013). This paper is mentioned in the article, but it is not clearly explained that the presented model is