I think this is the same issue or one very similar; sometimes specific blocks don't render unless you're really close to them.
Lots of water in a desert, and strangely blocky terrain.
I can also confirm for 1.9-pre3, the desert I found had extremely large, but shallow lakes with squid in them. Additionally, the terrain generation in deserts seems a bit odd overall in this snapshot; I have been finding large floating sand/sandstone islands which aren't even connected to anything, and a lot of the ground terrain in deserts looks extremely blocky and abrupt (more than usual, I mean, I know it's a game of blocks XD). It kinda reminds me of terrain generation from Beta 1.7, actually.
Confirmed for 1.8 Prerelease 3
This issue should be re-opened, it has come back in snapshot 16w07b and 1.9-pre3.