Water Physics - Falling Towards Shortest Distance

In my survival world with cheats enabled, water physics seem to be unreliable. When I place a bucket of water down, instead of spreading in all directions, it flows in a 1 block wide line towards the shortest distance to a drop. If there are two places, either the next block or both 5 blocks away, it will create two lines but not fill in the angle. When I switched over to a creative world, this issue is still happening. If there is no place for it to drop down a block, it spreads out like it usually does.

In case it's important;
Seed: 3203495950360737815
Minecraft Launcher: 1.6.48