Belinda Jensen Kare 11 Retirement Ends 33-Year Weather Run
Belinda Jensen Kare 11 retirement ended a 33-year run at the station, with her final sign-off as the main weather anchor arriving on April 30. She told viewers goodbye at 10 p.m., then returned for a last KARE 11 Saturday on May 2, turning a routine schedule into a two-day farewell for a familiar local presence.
April 30 at 10 p.m.
Jensen, 58, announced her retirement in February, then used the April 30 broadcast to close out her weekday role. During that farewell to the audience, she said, “You are what made it special,” and added, “Being your meteorologist has not just been a career. It’s been an honor and a responsibility I never, ever took lightly.”
Julie Nelson also marked the moment with a six-minute retrospective during the 5 p.m. broadcast, a long look back that put Jensen’s tenure in front of the same viewers she had served for years. The length of that segment signaled that the station treated the exit as more than a routine personnel change.
May 2 on KARE 11 Saturday
Jensen’s last Saturday broadcast was built like a sendoff, not a standard shift. Chris Hrapsky opened the live two-hour program by saying, “Thursday was the ceremony,” and “Today is the reception.” The broadcast itself featured champagne, speeches, specialty cocktails, and snacks, while Matt Kummer said, “It really is a day to celebrate her and the show she built,” and added, “There’s really no other program in local TV like it, and it’s endured because of her personality.”
Gov. Tim Walz then had “Belinda Jensen Day” read in a proclamation during the live May 2 broadcast, giving the farewell an official stamp without changing the basic fact that her on-air run was ending. Jensen later summed up the mood in a commercial break with a blunt line: “Now what are we doing?”
Two days, one farewell
The sequence matters because Jensen’s exit was split across weekday and weekend audiences, giving both groups a chance to see her off. That structure matched the size of her footprint at KARE 11: 33 years on one station, a recent $25,000 raised for charity by auctioning her on-air coats, and a final stretch that moved from polished remembrance on Thursday to a live celebration on Saturday.
For viewers, the immediate change is simple: the familiar anchor is gone from the slot she held for decades, and KARE 11 has closed out a long era with a staged goodbye rather than a quiet departure. That is the clearest signal of what local television still does when one of its longest-serving faces leaves — it makes the exit part of the show.
