Grew up in the Mountain West, 3,000 feet higher than Denver. Have cousins who have lived in Boulder for the past 20 years. They are pussies when it comes to snow. THING 1: TIRE CHAINS. Get some. You will need two because they only go on the drive wheels. Learn to put them on when it isn't fucking freezing. Get the ones that are easiest to put on because if you don't know chains, you will wrap them around the axle and that's an unpleasant afternoon. THING 2: First big snow, find yourself an empty parking lot and drive like a jackass in it. Talking donuts, powerslides, the whole nine yards. You are doing this to remind yourself, every season, what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh and how much it doesn't have in common with dry conditions. You are discovering that you can't brake worth a shit, that if you turn too tight the car will just go where physics tells it to, and that the gas must be eased on and off if you want to go anywhere. THING 3: In major metropolitan areas, the problem is never the weather, it's those other jackasses who have no idea what to do about the weather. There's nothing in your life that can't wait an hour or two for you to get home, unless the storm is coming and the jackasses are filling the freeways. If your commute is full of a million morons on good days, on bad days it's full of a million morons who have forgotten how to drive in snow (they never do Thing 2). Plan accordingly. New tires? Well, if you've got a garage you can buy a spare set of rims and put some snow tires on them, then swap out for the season. Or you can just get that done at the shop. All-seasons are definitely better than three-seasons 'cuz that fourth season really means "traction on ice." You're not going to get stuck in a blizzard. If it freaks you out that much, though, pick up some flares, a chemical hand-warmer or two and a half-dozen powerbars to keep in your trunk. Not that the flares will actually accomplish anything, but they make you feel prepared. And if you do need to start a fire (you won't), highway flares make that shit pretty simple.
Grew up in Snowy Newfoundland, then snowy northern Ontario. The only thing I can't speak to is tire chains (possibly illegal here, they demo the roads), but all of the other advice is what I give to everyone else - ESPECIALLY Thing 2 and snow tires.
Oh yeah. Tire chains are hell on roads. Thing is, though, over about 30mph they're hell on cars, too. Makes for a short-lived problem. In Washington, though? Studs are legal. November 1 to March 1. And you want to see the destructive force of an automotive vehicle on an asphalt road, give a major metropolitan area tire studs. parts of I-5 look like a dirt road, all crowned in the middle with two furrows on either side... Kinda wild that you can't rock tire chains in f'n Canada.
Really, good snow tires and ensuring your city spends enough money on snow plows and sand is best. Sand, because after a certain point salt no longer lowers the freezing point enough for it to be useful as a melting agent. In northern Ontario I lived in a city with several large mines. The ore transport trucks, combined with the occasional day above freezing destroyed the main roads in the city badly enough without tire chains, or studs. By the end of winter, the main roads are a total disaster and the city spends the rest of the year in construction mode trying to repair them The whole freeze-thaw effect, allowing liquid water to get into cracks in the road then expanding when it freezes, along with the heaving of the ground as it freezes, just completely destroys everything.
Puget sound has crowned roads so that runoff hits the gutters and doesn't stand. It means that when the roads do freeze, getting a little bit off to the side means you're in the gutter. It also almost never snows, emphasis on "almost." I believe the city of Seattle occasionally has four snow plows. What has happened twice in my memory is we had a ridiculous snowstorm and no snowplows, so the city council gets outraged and demands Seattle buys snowplows. Then it doesn't snow and the city council gets outraged and demands that Seattle sells these giant waste-of-money snowplows. The ironic part is there's this guy that basically arbitrages Seattle's stupidity. At least twice he's bought the snowplows at auction, stored them in a warehouse, then sold them back to Seattle at about 1000% profit within 18-24 months.
When I was going to University in NE Ohio, the city I lived in had maybe 4 snow plows - and it snows there EVERY YEAR, ALL THE TIME. I've never had so many snow days in my life. I never had a day off from snowfall in high school - just the occasional day that it was "too cold to go outside" so school was cancelled and we went sliding outside instead. I lived on a deeply suburban street in northern Ontario, and it often took the snow plow an extra day to get to us because they were busy with main roads. As a result, you just go used to driving in half a foot of snow. edit: the roads are sort of crowned in Ontario as well, but I don't think that the drainage system works as well - we just get lots of water on the road. Not hydroplaning bad, but big puddles, pedestrians beware bad.
We had 58" of snow in one evening once back when I was in 4th grade. They cancelled that day. Then two months later, we had 40" of snow but fuckin' hell we were not canceling again so we had to make it in for a 2-hour delay, and then went home 2 hours early because the snow was coming down some more. That was a school district that was not extending the school year.
Oh man, occasionally we'd have "Ice Days", where the roads were bad enough that the school bus companies weren't running, but you still had to go to school (total dumb bullshit, but that's another story). I'd get a ride in with my mom on her way to work anyways, so I'd get to school, there's be like 50 students and a bunch of teachers being all like "why are you heeeeere? go home kid, i wanna go home too." Looking back, that was probably one of my first realizations that my teachers were human, and just like me.
Do tire chains stay on all winter? And how do you know which pair of chains are easier to put on than others? I will certainly try your THING 2. I think I have a very healthy respect for snow and snow's effect on driving conditions, but it's always one thing to hypothetically understand and another to viscerally understand. And hopefully, as for THING 3, I'm considering working at a ski resort that will provide cheap housing and public transportation just because of the security in knowing that I won't have to rely on my car day in and day out.
Tire chains come off as soon as you see pavement. They also don't go faster than 30-40mph. They are to get you through snow and nothing else. You know which chains are easier to put on because it says on the box. Last thing: AWD helps you go faster in shitty conditions. It does nothing to make you stop faster. God speed.