It could be that, yes.

This is classic turbulent/laminar behaviour, driven by Reynolds number - the volume, the flow rate, the shape of the vessel.

I actually did a hydrodynamics project around this 20 odd years ago as a first year undergrad - one thing I noted was that I had to open valves slowly - any sudden acceleration could dramatically alter the threshold at which one would transition from laminar to turbulent flow, and you could only get back to the laminar regime by entirely stopping the flow, and bringing it back up, slowly.