I recorded the event in a youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_2xo3mKPp0&feature=youtu.be

But here is the text version.
I had a radius of 173 circle two high at y=12 (head level).
I was trying to understand what render distance i needed to see the walls from the center of the circle.
My render distance was set at 14 chunks. when I walked toward the center of the circle at the point where the wall could not be seen, I changed the chunk render distance to 16 chunks.
The bug occurred in the chunks behind me and to my right. in a straight line. It reminded me of the beta world holes.
The chunks were not simply invisible, you could interact with them by breaking or placing blocks but they would revert to the bug form.
I returned my render distance to 14 and replicated the bug.
The bug also occurred in the nether, and logging out and logging back into the server did not fix it. What did fix it was closing minecraft and opening it again.