Nereyda Seymour is selling hay to cattle farmers not a customer she normally sees this time of year at her Ventura Hay Co. store in Ojai.

One woman bought 260 bales for cows that would normally exist on grazing in late spring. But this year, the land is too dry for the grass to grow, and cattle farmers across the state are feeling the effects of drought.

As Ventura County closes in on the driest year on record, everyone, from ranchers to water managers to firefighters, is looking at ways to brace for a drought that could stretch on for years.

"You creep into a drought and crawl out of it," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We are definitely in for it this year."

The National Weather Service in Oxnard has measured just 4.49 inches of precipitation this year, which is on track to make this year the driest on record, said spokesman Bill Hoffer.

Between a weeklong cold snap of freezing temperatures this winter and the current drought, the weather's synergistic effect is starting to take its toll.

The cold weather caused many plants to die, making them more combustible, said Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Barry Parker. Add vegetation that is abnormally dry because of the drought, and conditions are prime for fires to start and spread quickly.

"We never came out of fire season," he said. "We are going to have above-normal fire potential for Ventura County."

While he encourages people to remove weeds and brush around their homes, it should only be done in the early part of the day, as a spark from a machine could start a fire on a hot, dry afternoon.

County farmers are feeling the one-two punch, too, said Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Susan Johnson.

After scores of avocado farmers lost their trees to the freeze this winter, they replaced them with new ones. Those new trees must be watered intensively, and farmers have to pay for it since it isn't coming from the sky. Other farmers are also having to buy more water than normal, she said.

The Casitas Municipal Water District is feeling the impact of farmers' thirst. Although Lake Casitas, which supplies water to Ventura and Ojai, is about 88 percent full thanks to previous wet winters, water usage is up. Farmers are supplementing their water from Casitas as their wells run low.

To conserve water, the district had doubled the amount of rebates available to customers who replace old dishwashers and washing machines with more efficient ones.

District spokesman Ron Merckling said the district is ramping up conservation measures. If it grows into a long-term drought, the agency could be 360 acre-feet a year shy of meeting customers' demands. One acre-foot supplies about two homes per year.

Eric Bergh, manager of resources for the Calleguas Municipal Water District, which serves much of eastern Ventura County, said his agency is continuously trying to increase storage locally and work on new conservation measures.

Since the big 1987-92 drought, the district has built an underground water storage facility in Moorpark, encouraged low-water landscaping and offered rebates for customers who buy water-saving appliances.

"Quite a bit of work has been done in the last 15 years to bolster our local resources," Bergh said.