General comments

This study employs a fleet of UAS to measure the flow around a 2 MW wind turbine under various configurations and atmospheric conditions. The velocity and turbulence intensity in the wake are quantified. Exciting and convincing results characterizing the momentum fluxes in the wake and the effect of atmospheric stability on the wake shape are presented. Overall, the manuscript is well-written and provides novel contributions to the field of in-situ wind turbine wake measurements. The study is well within the scope of Wind Energy Science, and I strongly support its publication.

Specific comments

1. Table 1 could benefit from the inclusion of some additional information. In the “pattern” column, it would be helpful to know at which longitudinal distance the lateral patterns were located for each case. What was the duration of each flight? Also, adding the lapse rate for each case would provide a sense of how strongly stable or convective the boundary layer was during each measurement. Finally, the region of operation of the turbine (i.e., above or below rated power) will substantially affect the strength of the wake at any given time, so this must be included as well.
2. Page 13-14: The discussion of the tip vortex measurements is not very strong. I agree that all of the factors listed will weaken the peak in the frequency spectrum. However, is the signature of the tip vortices visible in any of the time series taken at the wake edge location, even for just a short time? Is this what is meant by the line “approximately seven tip vortices could be observed between the measurement position and the WT”? Especially because tip vortex breakdown is discussed throughout the manuscript, it would be beneficial to elaborate a bit here.
3. Page 15: It would be nice to have a discussion of 1-2 more examples from Fig. 9a. For example, in case #708 the velocity shows a strong increase between 1D and 2D. Do you think this is because the large value of γ is causing the centerline of the wake to be deflected away from the measurement location? Or does the large value of I_x indicate that the wake is already starting to recover?
4. Page 17, lines 361-362: If future researchers are to use this UAS method to measure wind turbine wake flows, it would be helpful to have some elaboration on the difficulties. What do you think are the sources of uncertainty in the lateral velocity measurements and how could they be addressed in future studies? Do you think there could be vertical wake deflection caused by the terrain? Or is this due to some uncertainty in the lateral velocity measurements themselves or the positioning of the UAS? This information could help future researchers decide whether this method is appropriate for their investigations. This elaboration could also be added to the conclusion section of the manuscript.
5. Figures 9 and 10: For the longitudinal flight patterns, did the authors consider applying conditional averaging? Since the wind direction is changing, you could take the average of all velocities that are measured when the instantaneous misalignment angle β is less than a certain value (see references below).
6. Page 20: A couple other field studies have observed the double Gaussian shape of the near wake. These should be included for completeness:
   • Abraham, A., Dasari, T., & Hong, J. (2019). Effect of turbine nacelle and tower on the near wake of a utility-scale wind turbine. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 193, 103981.
   • Keane, A. (2021). Advancement of an analytical double-Gaussian full wind turbine wake model. Renewable Energy, 171, 687-708.

Technical corrections

1. Why are Δx and Δy used rather than x and y throughout the manuscript? If they are different, make sure they are clearly defined.
2. Figure 1: The numbers on the elevation contours are not clearly visible.
3. Page 7, lines 175-176: “laps” should be “lapse”.
4. Figure 4 legend: There is no black bar in the figure.
5. Figures 4, 8-14, and A1: Please make the symbols bigger so the different cases can be differentiated more easily.
6. Figure 7: Does the dotted line represent k^-5/3? Also based on the caption, the y-axis label should be S_u.
7. Page 22, line 435: I believe the authors are referring to a different case, as #206 occurs under unstable atmospheric conditions per Table 1.