a few months ago I was in search my my new daily driver bov tires. It's a 2007 FJ cruiser that I have had since new. I'm at 130k miles and my 3rd set of tires. Originals were some horrible street tires dueler R/T's that sucks in about any condition and were bald at 60k. Second set was a BFG at clone treadwright that I got well over 60k out of (still had lots of tread but were dry rotted bad). I like them but they would always hydroplane when I hit any kind of water/puddles. I wanted something better. I narrowed it down to Goodyear duratracks and then walmarts authority AT as I wanted an extreme snow rated A/T tire. Shopped and shopped...read review after review. A few months ago I picked the authority AT's and got them for less than $150 each mounted and shipped at my local Wally world. my size is 265/70/17.

The good
Great in water and wet roads. Zero hydroplaning
Great on corners (lots of daily driving in curvy country roads)
good in mud
SUPER in snow. I have been driving around in deep snow, light snow, and whatever gets thrown at me. So far stops almost on a dime, and don't have to use 4x4 as much. Today was sloppy wet stuff and it was like I was on dry roads. Much better than my threadwrights. Minimal wheel spin in really deep snow.
So far with a couple thousand miles on them they show no signs of wear.
Bad
A little louder than both other tires I have had
not good on ice (but neither was any of my other tires)
about the same MPG as the treadwrights (not as good as the stock tires)

Get them Siped  Then you will understand traction on ice and snow.

The new BFG TAKO 2 wears the mountain/snow flake symbol for extreme weather conditions rated.

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Got a set on my Tacoma in December. They've been the tips in this winter storm we got.

 

I bought Firestone winter tires for my truck and they are awesome. If you watch for clearance rims you can pick them up for cheap (probably ugly) then put winter tires on them and swap them in the winter then back in the spring. This gives you the best tires for winter and spares the tread on them during the other eight or nine months in between. That also means you can put off replacing the other set longer because there will be less tread wear on them and you won't have to worry about having decent tread depth for the upcoming winter.

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For your FJ Blizzaks are $157 a piece and close out rims are $99 a piece at Tire Rack.
http://www.tirerack.com/wheels/MiniWheelSearchServlet?nonWinter=true&partNum=6237883BML&autoMake=Toyota&autoModel=FJ+Cruiser&autoYear=2007&autoModClar=&wIndex=46&grid=true&sw=640

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Of course you could get fancy rims for the nice months and use your stock ones for the winter instead. Fancy rims cost fancy money though if you're working inside a tight budget. I'm actually debating whether or not I even need AT's the rest of the year instead of more highway biased tires that will last longer and add fuel efficiency since the trouble months are covered by the winter tires.

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What is that white stuff you're driving on?

I think it must be sand of some sort.

You know, like Destin.

+1  I have always done this with FWD cars I had.  I always found that discounttiredirect had the best prices on snows mounted and balanced on a set of steel wheels delivered to your door.

For my Jeep Patriot I have decided to go with more of a rotation using all terrain or all seasons.  I run so many miles that its ridiculous so I try to get as much out of my summer tires as possible, probably to much.  But as soon as one set is smooth, I have four others that were my winter use tires and they get swapped out, and the rims with bald tires get a fresh set of my choosing, and become my "winter tires,"  I then repeat the cycle.  
I actually found OEM steel wheels cheaper on ebay (including shipping) then at any of the local junk yards.

Snow tires are better, well worth the money, and I might do that with my wifes Patriot here pretty soon...  But I commute 65 miles a day all highway and any warm dry days would start to cook snow tires away.  

Winter tires, and at a minimum all seasons or AT with good tread are almost required for our winters...  If I want to make it up my driveway any ways:

they are factory siped

so we had even more snow and when people were spinning out not able to do even 20 I could drive/accelerate/ and stop almost as good as on dry road. These tires blow away my old ones. It should be a crime to drive on bald tires as so many do. You could tell who had snow tires and who did not. I saw a few sporty cars with rear wheel drive doing pretty good with snow tires. My Fj only slid when I wanted it to. So far no ice though just lots of crud snow. I don't get some people though. I was driving home in full on snow (BUT the roads were pretty clean) from work and this lady in front of me kept fish tailing out and I would put my blinkers on to pass and she would speed up and then fish tail. She almost crashed in the round about and I just gunned it so I could pass her in the passing zone. My FJ had no spinning or anything and she flips me off I don't get why people take it so personal. Just like the few people I work with who have bald tires yet can go on vacation/ spend money like it's going out of style. Priorities

I know snow rated tires are great and all but it's the other drivers I have to watch out for. Still some winter driving left and I'm so glad I got the new tires.
I am thinking of getting another set of rims/tires with a highway tread for summer time though

I know what you mean. I bought a Jeep Commander 7 years ago. I bought the V8 and 4WD. It's not set up for off roading but if my wife has to drive in the snow or there's a hurricane, she doesn't even have to put it into 4wd. I also bought a decent set of Cooper ATs. Yes I have crappy mileage and I don't care. When we got hit by the last snow storm, my son had an extremely bad asthma attack (O2 was 80 when we left the house). I was able to get to the hospital 4 miles away in about 7 minutes. This includes driving through the suburbs. That's faster than an ambulance around here in good weather. Then I proceeded to drive home twice a day while he was in the ICU, passing idiots the entire time. I could almost drive the same as normal, with the exception of intersections.

Admittedly, it wasn't bad for where I'm from in PA. For this area, it shut everything down. They wouldn't even transport my son to the children's hospital until the next day.

So did the last generation.

I have run both BFG AT KO and the Wrangler Authority on my Tacoma in the same size. The Goodyears are better in snow but I dislike the road noise in a daily driver.

I was happy with my Destination AT's and had 5 sets between three different vehicles but this last set wore out in about 8,000 miles so I'll be looking at new tires in the spring but I might switch to road biased all season tires since the snow tires do so awesome.

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Beat me to it.

I had BFG AT/KO's previously on the Avatar, as well as on my Ex's KJ and my old ZJ. They do just fine in snow. (We do have snow in Arizona, we have mountains...)

I'm running MT/KM2's now. They're worse on semi-plowed streets than the AT/KO's, but better in really deep stuff. Not that the AT/KO's were bad there - more than once I've ventured out ahead of the plows and moved the snow myself.

I have the old bfg at/ko in 31x10.5/r15 on my tj and they have done great in the snow,sleet, ice we have had in east tn.  I have made it to work at all scheduled times, I left early but lots of folks could not even make it.  When I got the chance to run away after working a bunch of overtime I told em to let me near my jeep and I was gone.  It made it home every time.



Part of why I got em was the snowflake.  Other part is they are said to last a long time on something the weight of a tj, I did get the light load range, c maybe, and not the e rated tires.



I am sure some other stuff would have done better.  Saw lots of stuff do worse, could have been all the vehicle to blame as well.  Or driver.  



For what they are I am happy with em.  I was somewhat amused when they got changed to the new ones but for how little wear these have on them I am ok with that.



I usually looked for the untouched backroads, I live rural so it tends to be a lot of backroads anyway.  But the jeep and tires did great and I preferred the ride of untouched slush/ice/snow that thawed and refroze a bit here and there to places it had been rutted and people had slid off the road or something and now there are frozen ruts going right off the road.



TJ and tires handled it regardless.



Even for my 2wd pickup I will wind up with some better tires later this year, what is on it does not work well and no I don't expect it to be a winter vehicle but I will probably go with a snow rated all terrain of some sort after seeing how well these did in everything.  I have had mine for a bit over a year I guess.  Might have 12k miles on em but doubt it.