EDIT:
I moved these posts to a separate topic for easier reference and follow-up discussion if needed.
Would you recommend those studded tires? Where I'm from it snows maybe on two or three days in the winter and never really gets below -5°C at night, but especially on humid days the roads have a very thin but very slippery layer of ice on top which traumatized me a bit
Those Scwhalbe Marathon Winter Plus tyres are ideal for such conditions. If I inflate it to a higher pressure (not over the stated max, which is pretty high relative to the tyre's width), only the centre section without studs carries the load, with studs hardly touching the ground (they do touch it and make a sound, but don't carry load). When there's snow or ice, I can drop the pressure to the normal (optimal) and studs bite - making it feel like I'm riding on dry pavement practically (of course, no crazy cornering, but it holds surprisingly well).
You can buy spare studs, and if you ride hard and a lot on pavement, studs can fly out, but not massively. Schwalbe recommends:
Ride at optimal pressure without hard pedaling, hard cornering or hard braking in the first few kilometres to let the studs bed in.
I do it using a tool when I buy a new tyre (went through several Marathon Winters over the previous decades).
This is what the tool and the spare studs look like:
https://www.bike24.com/p239567.html
Fair to note that the front tyre practically never looses studs, but it is not a big deal at the rear either (though it does happen when you ride hard on pavement as I explained).
For me, the scarry stuff is black ice in the early morning (when it is still dark often). I often can't see it, I can only feel it slipping. But the studs also help with regular snow and ice - and they are great.
Another note:
If roads are regularly paved, narrower tyres (like 35 mm as opposed to 40+ mm) are more likely to cut through to the pavement (or at least ice at the bottom) so a better option compared to wider tyres.
For more snow (around 10 cm or more), wider tyres are the better option, but such riding gets tiring very quickly (if you ride though deep snow for a hundred metres or more).
