US President Joe Biden returned to the White House Monday following his holiday break in Delaware amid severe winter weather that sent airport crews scrambling to clear the runway for Air Force One and forced the president's motorcade to crawl through snow-covered streets, NBC News reported.

Dozens of workers at Joint Base Andrews, near D.C., and at the Delaware airport Biden was departing from rushed to clear the runway ahead of Biden’s Monday morning return. At one point, the staircase that the president uses to exit the plane got stuck in the snow, preventing him and his staff from deplaning for about half an hour. Biden sheltered his face from the heavily falling snow once he was finally able to deplane. 

With weather conditions preventing the president from making the trip from the airport to the White House by helicopter, his motorcade had to make its way through road conditions so bad that several tractor-trailers in the D.C. area had jackknifed, leaving hundreds of people stranded in their vehicles.

Biden’s motorcade avoided its typical route and proceeded at around 20 miles per hour for most of the drive, slowing to a crawl in some spots as it passed cars spun out and stuck alongside the road, according to a pool report. At one point during the hour-long drive the president’s motorcade stopped completely for six minutes and the van carrying the press in the motorcade struggled to get through the slick roads at points, according to the report. 

Joe Biden spent eight days over the holiday break between his homes in Rehoboth and Wilmington-his 31st trip to Delaware as president.