I live in the northern tundra of Minnesota. My husband is a car enthusiast (massive understatement there) and knows and researches tires for fun.
For one of my vehicles, which he thought needed them, we bought very good winter tires. You keep them on entirely separate (in our case steel) rims and swap them out for your regular tires at the start of winter. (We have plenty of extra storage space in our garages, so we just stacked the extra 4 tires until Spring ..and vice versa.)
I definitely felt much more traction with the winter tires. I also prefer to have a manual transmission – because the ability to downshift slowly (without braking) AND having good gripping winter tires was best for me.
HOWEVER, no matter how good YOUR tires are, you have to remember that there will always be some butt head driving around with totally bald crappy tires spinning in the snow and unable to stop when s/he needs to at a light. So, again, good tires only save you from yourself—not other idiots.
You have to take off the winter tires before the pavement starts warming up. They wear too fast..so that’s the gotcha. Also, it’s expensive to have two sets of tires that you need to swap out (and technically you should pay for an alignment when you do this, too.)
My current vehicle has the best rated “all year” tires we could find. It still grips nice in snow, and I love them in rain, too. I am a super cautious driver (slow down well ahead of a stop, leave lots of distance between cars when it’s really bad road conditions) ..and so far, knock on wood, I’ve had no trouble.
These all-weather tires will still only last a couple of years, though.