Poultry and Who's in Charge of This Winter Weather?

I think we've had our January thaw the last two days.  Temps have been up in the 30s and we're experiencing a bit of melting.

All day yesterday we were warned of the misty drizzle changing to rain, then dropping temperatures last night, freezing rain and subsequent snow starting around midnight.

Well, it's 4 a.m. now and I'm awake because the house is too warm.  (We fired the wood stoves for the predicted dropping temps which have not, as of yet, happened.)  The thermometer still shows a reading of 32 degrees and it's raining.  Who is in charge of this winter weather?

As documented by these pictures I took yesterday, the poultry are enjoying the (temporarily) mild weather.

The geese would love to take a cleansing bath in the pond (albeit still very much ice and snow covered), but in lieu of that chose to take the equivalent of a sponge bath around one of their water pans.

Everyone was out and about in their "courtyard" area enjoying the break in the frigid weather.

This shows part of the layout of the different shelters that form a rough circle around the courtyard.

The big pen in the background looks to be open on the side facing, but it actually has a small door in the middle and hardware cloth covers the right and left sides.  The rest of the pen is protected by either plastic sheeting or plastic over hardware cloth.  It's curious that when the birds bed down in a selected pen, they station themselves by the open-air panels rather than snuggled in a protected corner where you would think they'd be more comfortable.  Supposedly, ducks and geese do quite nicely in nothing more than a three-sided shelter, but ours are locked up each night in one pen or another to keep wild critters from getting to them.  The chickens prefer to spend their nights in the chicken house on their roosts without as much fresh air, thank you very much.