General comments: The study quantifies relationships between fall speeds and reflectivity above the freezing level using two profilers in Darwin. The dual-frequency approach allows for more robust separation between air motions and fall speeds so that the reflectivity-weighted fall speed can be retrieved. The authors use a large sample size of data to quantify the Z-vt relationships for rain, snow, and mixed-phase media. The analysis is particularly helpful for quantifying and reducing the fall speed uncertainty of mixed-phase media.

The manuscript is very well written, and the analyses use existing techniques that are well-established. I have a few minor comments for the authors to consider.

Minor comments:

1. Line 12: Place Vt in parentheses
2. Line 83: Did the authors mean deep instead of deeper?
3. Line 115: Raleigh should be Rayleigh
4. Line 150: Suggest cross-beam distance or other wording rather than beamwidth since most readers will relate beamwidth to its measure in degrees
5. Section 2: While past research supports the idea that break events have more intense updrafts, did the authors consider using profiler or other data to confirm that the updrafts were actually more intense or other storm characteristics were different (e.g., particle size implied by maximum Z, echo top, etc.)?
6. Line 346: I presume that the peripheral regions also have large reflectivity gradients that are smoothed by the profiler’s larger beamwidth. Is it possible that a portion of the volume contains higher Z and media with higher vt, but the volume-averaged Z is lower due to the gradient? Thus, this could result in a higher vt than expected for a given Z.
7. Line 352: Should influence be influencing?
8. Line 364: The end of this sentence is awkward. Please rephrase
9. Line 472: Suggest tropical thunderstorms to avoid any potential confusion with tropical storms/cyclones
10. 2–4 captions: Please add histogram after cumulative to convey the type of plot
11. The focus of the study is on profiling radars. However, can the authors comment on the utility of these fall speed relationships for scanning weather radars operating at S-X bands (e.g., for multi-Doppler wind retrieval)?
12. Table 1: To make the table easier to read, please include the height range as a separate column entry.

General: This is an interesting observational study that gives a better understanding of hydrometeor behavior within deep convection. It refines the reflectivity-based parameterization for estimating terminal fall speed of graupel in tropical regimes based on dual-frequency profiler observations that graupel falls faster in Darwin convection than Oklahoma for the same reflectivity. The study has no apparent major flaws, and the manuscript is well-written. However, there are some minor clarifications required.

Specific comments:

1. Echo classification: Figure 1 presents 4 different classes, but it is not clear how these profiles are assigned, especially what is the difference between stratiform and bright band—aren’t they one and the same? The text refers to the technique used in Giangrande et al. (2013), but the relevant section in that reference is rather vague on what conditions define each of these four classes.
2. Profiler matching: This matching result needs some additional clarification, especially since NBF is mentioned. What is the combined spatial scale of the two profilers (i.e., do the beams overlap and if so how much)? An idea of how far apart the systems are located would help.
3. Disdrometer analysis: The text around line 195 states indicates that fall speed is not a direct measurement of the disdrometer. However, this study uses a 2DVD, which provide a direct measurement of fall speed because they use two cameras with 6-7 mm vertically offset fields of view (Schonhuber et al. 2008).
4. Stratiform processes and resultant DSDs: Around line 240, a relevant citation is warranted but missing. Here are some to consider: Waldvogel 1974, Huggel et al. 1996, Gatlin et al. 2018.
5. Line 281, grammatical mistake: “…increasingly rapidly…”
6. Other relevant studies to consider: Matrosov (2023) also examined the fall speed of frozen hydrometeors using a vertically pointing radar. Albeit that was for snowfall regimes, it included cases with rimed particles and thus should be considered for comparison with the observations from Darwin.
7. Figure 5: Suggest using different types of lines to delineate the two fits in each panel

References:

Schönhuber, M., Lammer, G., Randeu, W.L. (2008), doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-77655-0_1

Waldvogel 1974, doi: 10.1175/1520-0469(1974)031<1067:TJORS>2.0.CO;2

Huggel et al. 1996, doi: 10.1175/1520-0450(1996)035<1688:RSDATR>2.0.CO;2

Gatlin et al. 2018, doi: 10.3390/atmos908031

Matrosov 2023: 10.1175/JAMC-D-23-0002.1