Well this is a rude awakening, never drove a rear wheel drive car... For SHAME!
As long as you are confident in your driving ability you will be fine, you are on the right track in getting snow tires. Common sense will be your saving grace and if you think the weather is to bad or your not comfortable just stay home and wait it out. realistically the weather isn't really ever that bad out there, the bigger issue is just the tight spaces in NY more then anything. Personally I absolutely hate front wheel drive, Especially in the snow. Most people will tell you you're a fool becuase they don't know any better they just regurgitate the same misinformation other uninformed people tell them. Up until very recently everyone drove rear wheel drive cars all the time, and the majority of people still do. Some don't even realize it
Most people don't ever turn their four wheel drive on, so their driving rear wheel drive and trucks are generally worse since they don't usually have much weight over the back wheels.
I would suggest the "Performance" snow tire category, since most of the time there won't be any snow anyway and then you can at least retain most of the Z's superior handling characteristics and enjoy your car a bit more.
As mentioned find an open area and practice! Turn off the VDC and just slide that bitch around for awhile so you know what to expect and can learn to control it. With the VDC on you won't have much to worry about but where FWD will just slide off the road a RWD car will want to spind around if you were to loose traction, but again that is what VDC is there to help prevent.