“This isn’t it,” said Roger J. Cobb, looking at a marijuana bud between his fingertips.

Cobb was standing in the rain outside of a Big Lake apartment building, where he’d just been given some marijuana to identify. The question before him: Was this the legendary Alaska cannabis strain Matanuska Thunder F—?

“Hard to tell,” he said, eyeing it closely. “That don’t look like it though.”

It smelled too sweet, he said. It was too green.

Chasing thunder: Searching for Alaska’s most legendary cannabis strain