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. Rain-on-snow (ROS) events in mountainous catchments cancause enhanced snowmelt, leading to an increased risk of destructive winter floods. However, dueto differences in topography and forest cover, the generation of snowpackoutflow volumes and their contribution to streamflow are spatially andtemporally variable during ROS events. In order to adequately predict suchflood events with hydrological models, an enhanced process understanding ofthe contribution of rainwater and snowmelt to stream water is needed. In this study, we monitored and sampled snowpack outflow withfully automated snowmelt lysimeter systems installed at three differentelevations in a pre-Alpine catchment in central Switzerland. We measuredsnowpack outflow volumes during the winters of 2017 and 2018, as well assnowpack outflow isotopic compositions in winter 2017. Snowpack outflowvolumes were highly variable in time and space, reflecting differences insnow accumulation and melt. In winter 2017, around 815 mm of snowpackoutflow occurred at our reference site (grassland 1220 m a.s.l. – metres above sea level), whereas snowpack outflow was 16 % less at the nearby forest site(1185 m a.s.l.), and 62 % greater at another grassland site located200 m higher (1420 m a.s.l.). A detailed analysis of 10 ROS events showedthat the differences in snowpack outflow volumes could be explained mainlyby rainfall volumes and initial snow depths. The isotope signals of snowpack outflow were more damped than those ofincoming rainwater at all three sites, with the most damped signal at thehighest elevation site because its snowpack was the thickest and theresidence times of liquid water in its snowpack were the longest, thusenhancing isotopic mixing in the snowpack. The contribution of snowpackoutflow to streamflow, estimated with an isotope-based two-componentend-member mixing model, differed substantially among the three lysimetersites (i.e. between 7±4 and 91±21  %). Because thevegetation in our study catchment is a mixture of grassland and forest, withelevations ranging from 1000 to 1500 m a.s.l., our site-specific hydrographseparation estimates can only provide a range of snowpack outflowcontributions to discharge from different parts of the study area. Thus, thecatchment-average contribution of snowpack outflow to stream discharge islikely to lie between the end-member mixing estimates derived from the threesite-specific data sets. This information may be useful for improvinghydrological models in snow-dominated catchments.

Monitoring snowpack outflow volumes and their isotopic composition to better understand streamflow generation during rain-on-snow events