You know, I hate it when someone says "from when I was young" and then posts the date 1991.
Anyhow.
The true Perfect Storm - the Columbus Day storm, Oct 12, 1962 - Corvallis, OR had a 127mph gust 60 miles inland, Newport, OR on the coast at the coast guard station the anemometer pegged out at 138mph for 5 minutes and then blew away, and at Cape Blanco on the Oregon coast, NWS estimates sustained winds of 150mph and gusts to 179mph - it felled 11.2 billion board feet of timber and killed people from California to British Columbia - and it was not a hurricane - it was a mid-latitudes low pressure area.
http://oregonstate.edu/~readw/October1962.html
The 1972 Portland-Vancouver tornado that killed 6.
The 1948 Floods that wiped out the entire town of Vanport, on the Columbia River. 25 people killed and a city of 20,000 gone.
1903 Flash Flood at Heppner in NE Oregon, 247 people killed.
December 1964/Jan 1965 Floods in the Willamette Valley - 17 people died, and virtually every river in the state was well over flood stage.
The extreme cold event of Feb 1933: A cold outbreak brought a surge of Arctic air into the state. The city of Seneca, in northeast Oregon, recorded the state's all-time record low temperature of -54 degrees F. The next day it was nearly 100 degrees warmer when the high reached 45 degrees.
The January 1950 snowstorms - A series of three snow storms and cold air the entire month ended up giving most inland areas over 4 feet of snow, and some mountainous areas over 20ft. Most highways west of the Cascade mountains were closed.