Yes, I have been riding to school or to work all winter since I started riding bikes seriously, back in 1971. The commute nowadays is about 19 km in to work and anywhere from 21 km and up on the way back, depending on how much time I've got and how I feel. Of course, if it's snowing, I try to minimize time on the road. In the summers, I can do the 20 km to work in 50 to 52 minutes, but in the winter snow and ice, it could take over an hour. Ever since I've lived in Vancouver, BC, I have used a fixie for winter riding. It's easier to control the bike on ice, especially on descents. I don't use any special equipment, just the same 23mm tires I use in the summer. This winter, though, I'll be using a front disk brake in order to save wear on the rims. I think they're making rim walls thinner these days; rims don't seem to last as long as they used to. They'll develop longitudinal cracks, or they will weaken to the point that the innertube will pop out after the sidewall gives and the tire explodes! So the front disk will give me one less thing to worry about.

If you can find safe places to ride in the snow, I think it will greatly improve your bike-handling skills. Around Vancouver, it will snow maybe twice in a winter, with the snow staying around from 3 days to a couple of weeks. The first day of snow is usually quite ridable. By the second day, though, the cars have packed the snow down, so it gets tricky to ride over the bumps, some of which can be icy. Or if it thaws and then refreezes, you get hard icy bumps underneath the top layer of snow.

The snow on the coast tends to be quite wet, so it's easier for it to get hard and icy. The snow in the interior is much drier. It's easier to drive a car thru dry snow, but there's usually too much of it to be able to navigate a bicycle over it. Because of the wet snow, though, drivers in Vancouver tend to be more careful and to drive slower. I think most of the car-car collisions in Vancouver are caused by drivers from the Canadian prairie who think they know how to drive in snow, much better than these slow Vancouver drivers. they don't realize that the Vanc drivers are slow for a good reason.

But having said that, I am NOT looking forward to riding in the snow. I kind of hope global warming will stop snow from falling in the Pac NW, if only at sea level.

Luis