Officials remain adamant that region is prepared. The three water supply reservoirs in the region are full, and if needed water can be directed from them into the river basin. The water-saving measures suggested by local leaders on Monday — including taking five-minute showers; turning the faucet off when brushing your teeth; and waiting to wash dishes and laundry until you have full loads — remain voluntary.

“Our water supply infrastructure is well-equipped to handle drought,” Michael Nardolilli, the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), said in a news release. “Nevertheless, it makes sense for all of us to use water wisely and not waste this precious resource.”

The current drought watch is the second level in a four-part assessment scale used by local leaders and water utilities, according to Lindsey Martin, a communications specialist with the Council of Governments.

“If we reach ‘drought emergency,’ then the utilities would be looking to enact mandatory measures,” Martin said, referring to the scale’s highest level. The emergency level would be triggered if, based on the regional drought plan, there was a “50 percent probability” the region cannot “meet water supply demands over next month.”

According to the Council of Governments, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared that local precipitation levels are nearly 4 inches below normal in the last 60 days.

After a wet start to 2024, rain shut off abruptly this summer as temperatures soared to record highs. As the ground dried out rapidly, a “flash” drought overtook the D.C. area and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

The federal government’s drought monitor shows extreme drought — the second-highest category — covering much of northwest Virginia, including the Interstate 81 corridor, most of Loudoun County and parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties. The rest of the D.C. area is classified under moderate to severe drought, except for Southern Maryland, where recent rains have helped close the rainfall deficit.

In early June, there was no drought in the region, but minimal amounts of rain have fallen since. Only about 0.5 to 2 inches of rain have fallen, which is less than half the norm.

The District posted its fourth-driest June on record with just 1.15 inches of rain.

Somewhat more rain has fallen in July, but it has been hit-or-miss with the highest amounts east of Interstate 95 and minimal totals to the west.

Both Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International Marshall airports have registered their second-driest summers on record to date.

Through this week, downpours will continue to be hit-or-miss. The kind of widespread drenching needed to put a meaningful dent in the drought is not in the forecast.

The National Weather Service, however, gently leans toward above-normal rainfall during August in the region.

In a career mostly as a military spouse, Mrs. Powell also was a children’s book author and served on the board of America’s Promise Alliance, which focuses on civic engagement, education and workforce development.

She married Powell, then a lieutenant in the Army, shortly before he left for his first deployment to Vietnam in 1962. Her husband rose to the rank of general, becoming the first Black national security adviser in 1987 and the youngest and first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989.

He retired from the military in 1993, was appointed secretary of state by President George W. Bush in 2001 and spent four often-beleaguered years in that job amid the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The Powells moved more than 20 times during Colin Powell’s decades of active-duty service, and Mrs. Powell took a leading role helping other military families prepare for similar adjustments with their families. She was also a member of the Arlington Ladies, a group that attend funerals of service members at Arlington National Cemetery.

After her husband reentered civilian life, Mrs. Powell began to focus her energies more on education issues and improving children’s lives.

The couple were key to launching America’s Promise Alliance in 1997, and Mrs. Powell held several positions on its board, including her most recent post of chair emeritus. She also wrote two children’s books to support the mission of the organization, called “America’s Promise” and “My Little Red Wagon,” aimed at encouraging children to give back to their communities, according to publisher HarperCollins.

From 1989 to 2000, she was chair of the National Council of the Best Friends Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of young girls.

Mrs. Powell, who was appointed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board during Bill Clinton’s presidency, was also picked to be on an advisory board for historically Black colleges and universities in 2010 by President Barack Obama. She sat on many other boards and won service awards.

Alma Vivian Johnson, the eldest of two daughters, was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 27, 1937. Her father was the principal of one of Birmingham’s Black high schools, and her mother ran a day care, according to the obituary sent by Cifrino.

In 1957 she received a bachelor’s degree in speech and drama at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville. She returned to her hometown and briefly hosted an afternoon radio show that played music and discussed household tips.

She soon relocated to Boston, where she studied speech pathology and audiology at Emerson College and worked for the Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing by providing hearing tests, fitting veterans with hearing aids and teaching the deaf to read lips, according to the family obit. She was set up on a blind date with Colin Powell in 1961.

She was reluctant to go out with a soldier and told The Washington Post she purposefully overdid her makeup and put on an unflattering dress. But when she met him, the general wrote in his memoir, she decided he looked “like a little lost twelve-year-old” and changed both her mind and her dress. Colin Powell, meanwhile, wrote that he was “mesmerized by a pair of luminous eyes, an unusual shade of green.”

They married the next year, at the First Congregational Church in her hometown, and she did not complete her graduate education.

Survivors include three children, Michael, Linda and Annemarie; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson. Michael Powell, a lobbyist, served as Federal Communications Commission chairman under President George W. Bush.

Mrs. Powell supported her husband throughout his military career, but she was opposed to him running for president, The Post reported, and despite entreaties from leaders of both parties, he said he was unenthusiastic about campaigning for high office. He also acknowledged his wife’s struggle with clinical depression in 1995 after the diagnosis became public amid heated discussion of his political prospects.

Depression, he said in 1995, “is very easily controlled with proper medication, just as my blood pressure is sometimes under control with proper medication. … When the story broke, we confirmed it immediately, and I hope that people who read that story who think they might be suffering from depression make a beeline to the doctor.”

The Post’s Bob Woodward asked the former general a few months before his death, “Who was the greatest man, woman or person you have ever known?”

“It’s Alma Powell,” he said. “She was with me the whole time. We’ve been married 58 years. And she put up with a lot. She took care of the kids when I was, you know, running around. And she was always there for me and she’d tell me, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ She was usually right.”

The encouraging findings come amid larger efforts to develop a cheap, simple blood test that can quickly diagnose patients with Alzheimer’s without forcing people to undergo more expensive and invasive exams, such as spinal taps. Although blood tests are already used in clinics, they are often not covered by insurance, costing hundreds of dollars or more.

“Overall, this is a nice addition to a rapidly growing literature, although not necessarily a game changer per se,” said Cliff Abraham, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand who was not involved in the study.

The study’s authors compiled data from patients with cognitive symptoms whose mean age was 74. About 23 percent of them had subjective cognitive decline, 44 percent mild cognitive impairment and 33 percent dementia.

The authors measured the level of p-tau217, a type of protein that builds up and impairs the brain in Alzheimer’s patients, and amyloid beta, another protein that is considered a biomarker of Alzheimer’s.

“It is clear, but not surprising, that the blood test offers better diagnostic accuracy than clinical evaluation, which has access to only indirect information about brain health, for example cognitive tests,” Abraham said.

Alternatives for diagnosing Alzheimer’s include PET scans, which can cost $5,000 or more, and are not covered by Medicare except in trials, while spinal taps are invasive.

The study adds to evidence that diagnosing Alzheimer’s could soon be done more quickly and easily. Faster and more accurate diagnoses allow patients and their families to better prepare for medical bills, enroll in clinical trials or anticipate care needs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, afflicting more than 6 million Americans. Although younger people can get Alzheimer’s, most patients are elderly, with the number of patients doubling every five years beyond age 65, according to the CDC. Up to 14 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s by 2060.

The disease begins with mild memory loss but can progress to patients losing the ability to carry on a conversation. It is one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States, with death rates climbing. There is no cure, although there are drugs that can slow the disease.