I'll probably never use them as every day winter tires here in Portland (unless we have more and bigger climate changes coming). They are a lot slower rolling than my regular winter ride, Paselas. And given their expense, that's a lot of money to throw away building bigger quads. I'll keep mine mounted on spare wheels for the winter and just throw them on when needed. But they do feel like a tire with a very wide range of ridability. Caution required on ice, but that caution is rewarded with the "rubber down" scenario so valued by the motorcycle crowd. They may hit their limit in deep snow faster than the best but that will be for width and drag reasons and just plain being too hard to move that much snow, not safety. (I loved riding diamond point cyclocross tires in my MA and MI winter days; grippy, not very wide and perfect for cutting through fresh snow. Those rides were ear-to-ear grin blasts.)

Edit: and to your question - yes, they are very, very grippy, much more so than any regular tire and significantly more than the diamond point X-cross tires I loved so much. Only tire I have ever used that came close were the green Vittoria cyclecross tires about 15 years ago. I used to joke that I feared when I rode dry roads I would get junks of pavement stuck in my fenders and sought out wet, puddles, sand, leaves, off-pavement, anything to reduce rolling resistance. My Continental ice tires haven't seen dry yet.

Ben