In the Heat of the Fall : Weather: Workers stay inside. Those who can get away hit the beaches. High temperatures are expected to last until Friday.

The sizzling 100-degree heat in Thousand Oaks on Tuesday wasn’t exactly the kind of weather that hot-dog vendor John Smiley likes to see in October.

“When it gets hot like this, I’ll probably eat more than I sell,” Smiley said, taking off his red golfing cap and wiping his brow. He had sold only 15 hot dogs during the lunch hour. “People don’t even step out of their offices.”

The heat bore all the markings of a summer that Ventura County never had, said Marty McKewon, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. On Tuesday, Fillmore recorded a scorching temperature of 102 degrees, according to the county flood-control district, which also tracks weather conditions. In Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley it was 100. And in Ventura, it was 84 degrees.

“This is what we normally expect during the summer months, and as you know, that wasn’t the case,” McKewon said. “And it’s going to be another hot day tomorrow.”

In fact, the heat will not break until Friday, when temperatures are expected to fall to the relatively cool 70s on the coast and to the 90s inland, McKewon said.

All over the county, residents reacted to the heat by searching out cool alternatives to their daily routines. Students flocked to county beaches, office workers scurried to their air-conditioned cubicles and the caretakers of an exotic animal compound at Moorpark College took measures to help the animals beat the heat.

Jim Peddie, a college instructor and veterinarian, said student assistants were warned Tuesday morning to make sure that the 275 animals housed at the compound had plentiful water.

Except for a sea lion, which has its own pool, all the animals were hot and bothered, he said. Pens that house large game cats were sprayed with cool water, and most of the exotic birds spent the day in air-conditioned quarters.

Even Bobby the water buffalo, who normally hates being sprayed with water, wanted relief, Peddie said.

“If we spray him, he seems to resent it. It’s better to hose down the floor on his cage,” Peddie said. “It’s hot enough that any animal that’s outside is going to be bothered.”

At the Fillmore fish hatchery, no one braved the midday sun to see the trout, manager Jim Adams said. However, the fry were doing just fine.

“They don’t even know that it’s hot out,” he said. “They’re in their tanks, and they’re tickled pink.”

The most popular place to be was the beach. Santa Paula High School seniors Eric Steffey, 18, and Lori Jones, 16, fled their hometown for Surfrider Beach in Ventura to escape the sweltering inland temperatures.

The pair spent the afternoon with their shoes off and their pants rolled up as they combed the beach for shells under a steady ocean breeze.

“It’s a whole lot cooler here than in Santa Paula,” Steffey said. “It was about 95 degrees back home.”

Nearby, Ventura resident Harley Hall, 53, who moved from Illinois 13 years ago, spent a day off from work watching windsurfers sail across the ocean under cloudless skies.

“After such a cool summer, this is real nice,” Hall said. “You just can’t beat the weather here. It’s perfect.”

Down the beach from Hall, Camarillo resident Joseph Chavez, 31, cast his fishing line past the breakers, hoping to snag something to make his day worthwhile.

“It was just too hot back at the house, and I don’t have air conditioning,” Chavez said. “Anyway, this is a lot better than sitting home watching Oprah.”

Times correspondent Scott Graves contributed to this story.