THE Bureau of Meteorology has locked the public out of its main fire-weather website.

Only registered users can gain access to the bureau's fire weather web pages, which contain crucial four-day forecasts on grassland and forest-fire danger indices.

The pages even contain maps showing the level of grassland curing across the state, spot-fire and prescribed burn forecasts, plus tables showing a raft of fire-related weather forecasts for each district.

The bureau's services policy branch manager, Robin Hicks, said the site was restricted to "registered users" in a bid to avoid public confusion.

But former bureau supervisory meteorologist for fire weather services David Packham said it was absurd to restrict community access to the site.

"It's the best fire-weather information in Australia, it's paid for by the public and the public needs that information," Mr Packham said.

"People are quite capable of interpreting this information.

"It's part of the education process in understanding fire weather, which volunteer (firefighters) need to understand."

But Mr Hicks said some of the information on the fire-weather page was in development and needed to be interpreted in the right way, which was why it was generally restricted to fire-agency and government staff.

But Mr Packham said the bureau already gave the public access to complex weather forecasts and climatic information that was "in development".

"People are intelligent, especially rural people, when it comes to weather," Mr Packham said.

"I think it's got more to do with the CFA and DSE (Department of Sustainability and Environment) wanting to maintain control of all (fire weather information), which the bureau has always gone along with."

It's not the first time Australian climate scientists have called for forecast information to be withheld from the public.

In 2007, The Weekly Times reported Australian climate scientists had urged their Japanese colleagues to keep a forecast of continuing drought under wraps as it would be "very upsetting to the public who live in areas of risk".