1) Don't know, wasn't there last Friday.
2) Yesterday morning we landed on 27L against the alternation all morning due to the wind.
There are set criteria for when the warning message about turbulence goes out on the ATIS when landing on 27R, but there's no subsequent set of numbers for dictating when we might de-alternate and land 27L instead. It is probably fair to say that that is done in response to comments from those that have just flown the 27R approach.
I don't know about the feasibilty of creating a written down set of criteria for when we would de-alternate to use 27L as the landing runway in strong winds, maybe your flight ops folks should approach ours?
WF.