If you don't already know about such things, and you want to make an edumicated assessment of where the cloud bases/tops may be, such a forecast can be made by reference to a Skew-T diagram, a variation on a tephigraph.
Basically the principal factors are the moisture content of the air, the environmental lapse rate (ELR) and the saturated adiabatic lapse rate (SALR).
If you would like to delve more, here are two links that you might like to look at. I will add, though, that these will still only be forecasts and guesstimates and therefore may or may not be more accurate that the stuff you see on F215s. In reality, I suspect that these techniques are largely what the met people will use to generate such forms anyway, only they have more money and sophisticated technology to help them.
- Jack Harrison is a guy who does met forecasting for the UK's gliding fraternity. Among the many superb items on his website is a tutorial for obtaining atmospheric soundings (displayed on Skew-T's) and getting useful pieces of info from them. Page 8 of the tutorial on the link provided is where the cloud bases/tops are. A seperate tutorial explains how to get the soundings from the NOAA.
- Here is an Aussie storm-chasing site which has more stuff on skew-T's and a bit more besides.
I was a power pilot before I was a glider pilot, but the latter has certainly taught me a lot more about met, and where to find answers to met questions. Much of which I think would be useful to certain sections of the power pilot community if they only knew about it....
Hope this helps, even if just to cure insomnia. Cheers.
* Jack's wider site can be reached through
www.weatherjack.co.uk