Originally Posted by BinaryJay

Get winter tires. That makes the most difference for actual handling once you're moving. The AWD doesn't do a lot for you handling wise but it does make a big difference in terms of getting moving and lessening chances of getting stuck. With my winters and AWD I don't even feel like I need to shovel my driveway apart from a path to walk to the car. My favourite thing in the winter is parking on the street on top of hard packed uneven icy snowbanks that other cars avoid because they would get stuck... makes finding parking a bit easier in the city hehe.

If someone were to crash into me in the winter and I saw they had summer tires on I would go ballistic.

By the way, tire chains/tire studs are illegal here and I would suspect they would be equally so in California. They're illegal because they really chew up the roads and end up costing everybody tons of money in road repairs.