Hot Spell Brings a Summer Preview : Weather: High-pressure condition creates unseasonal heat wave. Ventura breaks record for date with 84.

From Thousand Oaks to Ventura, residents sought shade and cold drinks Tuesday as an unusual hot spell caused record high temperatures across Ventura County.

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Tuesday was the hottest day of the year so far, and today promises to be even warmer, said Bruce Entwistle, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“The temperatures are going to stay pretty warm,” he said Tuesday.

Ventura was the county’s hottest community Tuesday with a high of 84, a record for the date, said Tom Johnston, a private climatologist who studies Ventura County weather.

Oxnard’s high of 83 was also a record, while Ojai and Thousand Oaks recorded temperatures of 82 and 81 degrees, respectively, National Weather Service officials said.

Today, Thousand Oaks, Santa Paula and Ojai are expected to be the hot spots at 85 degrees, while the coastal regions cool off to the mid- to upper 70s--still above normal.

A high-pressure condition is creating the unseasonal heat wave, which may last through the weekend, Entwistle said. However, forecasters said sea breezes that would drop the high temperatures back into the 70s could blow in Thursday.

Tuesday’s warm weather prompted Thousand Oaks resident Paula Osterbrink to have a picnic with her daughter, 4-year-old Ali.

“It really is a beautiful day,” said Osterbrink, who had spread out a feast of sandwiches, salad and cheese on a lawn at Cal Lutheran University. “It’s always been in the back of my mind to come here. I thought it would be nice to have a picnic.”

Heather Mataisz and Eric Bryant, also Thousand Oaks residents, set Tuesday aside for spring-cleaning--of their horses.

“We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, but you can’t do it when it’s cold,” Mataisz said while soaping her dirty white horse, Shandu, in their driveway. “We’re trying to turn this brown horse white again.”

Mataisz said she was surprised by the sudden heat wave.

“I was sweating this morning at 10 a.m.,” she said.

In Santa Paula, Sue Ricards and her 8-year-old son, Joseph, headed to Foster’s Freeze, both for the ice cream and the air conditioning. A 47-year resident of Santa Paula, Ricards said she can’t recall such a hot spell in March.

“I can’t remember any time where we’ve had such a short cold season,” she said. “Being this hot this early on, it’s more like June.”

At the Kotake Farms strawberry ranch in Camarillo, workers tucked red and blue bandannas under baseball caps to keep the blazing sun off the back of their necks and guzzled water to keep cool.

“If it’s not windy, it makes it hard for us,” Maricruz Ruiz said while wiping sweat from her forehead. Ruiz said many workers began to feel faint Tuesday because of the sudden heat.

Agricultural meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said the hot weather will mature the county’s strawberry crops faster than normal, which could be problematic because berry prices are currently low.

But other crops in the county would not be affected by the warming trend, he said.

“Water-wise, we’re in real good shape. We have to realize we’re in a semiarid climate. . . . We have to take the wet weather when we get it,” he said, adding that the county still needs more rain before summer.

Despite the clear skies and hot sun that blanketed the county Tuesday, Schaeffer was optimistic. “If we get two to three inches in March, we should be in pretty good shape,” he said.